


How to Retask an Orphan Process

by MayonnaiseJane



Series: On the Debugging of a Human Being [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (The Machine is not a delusion Ron), Ableist Language, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders, Episode: s03e01 Liberty, Episode: s03e03 Lady Killer, Gaslighting, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Involuntary Hospitalization, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institution, Missing Scenes, Not Beta Read, POV Third Person Omniscient, PTSD, Ridge Stone Psychiatric Facility, Robin Farrow, Root centric, Root-centric, Self-Harm, Warning for OCs with:, and pretty much anything and everything else, if it's not I'll make corrections, involuntary medication, it takes place in psychatric inpatient after all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-12 14:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 185,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10493193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayonnaiseJane/pseuds/MayonnaiseJane
Summary: Her long term goal of contacting The Machine at last realized, but forbidden by Her from leaving Ridgestone Psychiatric Facility, Root finds herself for the first time in a long time floating aimless, without a goal to pursue. Although she's incredibly resistant to treatment, and Dr. Carmichael is absolutely no help at all, in the four months she is confined, the influence of The Machine, some of the more dedicated support staff of Ridgestone and several of her fellow patients help Root to heal some old wounds, to adjust, to transform from the stepford smiling callous contract killer we met in her first appearances to the expressive, selfless, Analog Interface, devoted to doing whatever it takes to save the world.(An Orphan Process is a computer process whose parent process has finished or terminated, though it remains running itself. It no longer has a _purpose_ but continues to use system resources.)





	1. Transfer

**Author's Note:**

> As with the previous story in this series, I apologize in advance to anyone who's actually admitted to inpatient. I'm sure this is not fully accurate. I'm working off the perspective of someone who has been with people through intake, and visited them there many times, but never been a patient myself. I think I'm somewhere in the 'Movie Version of Girl: Interrupted' area of realism. I hope. (Edit: Don't let this warning put you off, all comments from people who have been inpatient have been surprisingly very positive, so I may be doing a better job than I thought.)
> 
> Also note that while explicit attention will be paid to the problems she has developed as a reaction to her life experiences, I am very specifically dancing around Root's organic diagnosis. It was never named in the show, and will never be named here either, because while I think we can all agree that she DOES have a heritable organic 'underlying condition' (the same one that caused her mother to be described as 'not well,') people differ on what it is. So even if Ridge Stone was kind of off due to thinking the Machine isn't real, it's likely they hit close if not got it correct, so even mentioning what THEY think it is is something I won't be doing. I want to leave that open ended for head-canons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Root's answers in this chapter make me nervous that she's going to come across OOC to some readers, so... I'll just ask that you please keep in mind that at this point she's more S2 Root than S3 and beyond Root here. This is "The world is boring" and "I'm the most fun" Root, with approximately zero moral compass, and the gal to judge others as "bad code." This is "hiding since I was 12" Root who still hasn't found where she belongs, hasn't learned to trust others, hasn't encountered Cyrus... etc. We're watching her slowly change from God Mode Root, to Mors Praematura Root, and it's my hope that it's going to be a fun ride.

"Morning Gloria! I've brought up our transfer," Angie, a nurse from the catatonic and dissociative unit, smiled.

"Oh, come right around," Gloria waved them past the window, and through an electric door. Root peered up at it as it glided open. No visible controls. No one passed through here without the say so of the front desk.

"Welcome to the M-Unit Robin," Gloria appeared from around the corner, "if you don't mind terribly, I'd like to go over a few things with you."

"My calendar is completely empty," Root replied, with a bright smile.

"I'll leave this with the front desk, they're going to want to go through it," Angie indicated the pillowcase containing the sum total of Roots belongings in the hospital.

"Of course. Thank you Angie. Come visit sometime. We can catch up." She was on her very best behavior. New unit… new first impressions, and this time she was lucid.

"Why don't you come over in here," Gloria said, opening a side door, into a small intake room. "Since you were admitted in an altered state downstairs, I just wanted to go over some of your paperwork, and see if there was anything you want to correct."

"Of course… Uncle Harold… well, he probably doesn't know _everything_ you needed."

"Now, we have you here under the New York State mental hygiene statute 9.27, which is one that allows us to hold you for 60 days based on the certification of two psychiatrists. Considering the state you were in on arrival can you understand why that was done?"

"It's… very jumbled," Root replied, gesturing vaguely, "At this point I just have to sort of trust that, at the time, I wasn't really able to do much for myself. I don't _specifically_ remember not being able to walk or feed myself without assistance, but… I guess my memory was impaired then too. I do remember those things being _difficult_ however… must have been later in recovery."

"That's likely. Now, since you're not entirely clear on it, I should tell you you've been here for 19 days, and that as we approach sixty days, we will have to make some assessments and decide whether to discharge you, or to petition the court for a further sixty days."

"I understand."

"Now, this is mostly perfunctory, so I'm just going to hand you this page… this is what we have on your family medical history, based on what your Uncle told us. Is there anything we need to add to this? He wasn't entirely certain about your personal history, and had no information on the other side of the family."

"Well, I don't have any more information than he does on my father's side," Root replied, a little discomfited with what she read on the page. Despite the gross violations of privacy she'd committed on numerous occasions, it didn't feel good to be on the opposite end. "And, I can see he told you all about my mother… and our little _car accident_ ," obviously he had to lie about the ferry bombing, but did he have to make it her fault? "But I can only presume that he was saving his own pride when he neglected to mention that my grandmother, that's his mother too, wasn't entirely well either. They never like to mention that. They liked to treat mom as… an anomaly."

"And you as well?"

"No, no… aside from _Uncle Harold_ , I haven't seen any of them in years. I don't know what they'd think of me now, but last I saw them, they never treated me like her. I think he's just holding a grudge over the accident… and pointing a gun at him."

"So, no one else in your family would think you belong here?"

"Not because I _need_ it. Maybe as some form of retribution. I'm sure some of them are none too pleased that I just took off like that after my mother died and never called or wrote. I didn't see any of them for a very long time, until I ran into Uncle Harry again last year."

"And your cousins?"

"Uncle Harry has kids?"

"No, he mentioned a nephew and niece that aren't your siblings," she checked the notes, "John and Sameen?"

"Oh…" Root sighed rolling her eyes, it was bad enough he made himself her Uncle, nevermind making her related to his little pet... and Shaw. Damage control time. "They're not my cousins. They're Harold's late wife Grace's sister's kids. So I'm his niece, and they're his niece and nephew by marriage, but, we're not _actually_ related. He tends to forget that," she shrugged, "If it's all the same, I'd rather not have either of them as visitors. I've barely met them."

"We only have your Uncle down for visiting."

"Good," Root smiled lightly and went back to pouring over the paperwork.

"These margin notes… they're not wrong," the placid smile never left her face even as she swallowed a bit of bile seeing the text written in the margins next to the family history of mental illness section, there in black and white for the first time since her mother's death. It was clear this posthumus diagnosis had been noted at a later time, not something Harold told them, but something the doctors had surmised from what they were given to work with. "At least, that's what they _thought_ she had… They could have been wrong, it's not as if anything they tried helped. None of those pills made any difference at all. It was a waste of time. There wasn't any way to help her."

"Alright, so… this is all in order?"

"Yes."

"Please initial at the bottom," Gloria handed her a pen.

Root paused for a moment, to remind herself what her initials were supposed to be, and marked the paper as requested.

"Now, keeping in mind that you came to us somewhat less than voluntarily, what do you think we should set as some goals for you? What do you feel you need the most help with?"

"To be honest, the majority of the problems I came in here with have completely resolved. I do still feel a little bit foggy, but I've been taking Ativan three times a day for… 19 days was it?  I think the remainder of my time here would best be spent tapering off of that so I can prepare for discharge at the end of my sixty days. I understand it can be tricky to discontinue benzodiazepines."

"So you don't feel you have any remaining psychological work to do?"

"Like what? I was catatonic, and now I'm not. It's not that difficult to pin down whether a person is recovered from that or not is it? I'm walking, talking, alert… what else do you need to see?"

"Okay… I want to run down some diagnostic questions with you, and maybe we can identify _something_ for you to work on while you're here, some form of self improvement besides just tapering off the Ativan… which we _do_ want to start as soon as possible, since the purpose in that was to break the catatonia, and it tends to conflict with many of the maintenance medications we may want to prescribe."

"I don't _need_ maintenance medication."

"We'll assess that once you're off the Ativan, okay?" Gloria smiled. "Now, these are not diagnoses, okay? These are symptoms and feelings, which occur in both ill and well people, so please answer honestly. They may not even extend your stay here, just… give you something to talk about in therapy…"

Root sighed and nodded.

"Are you experiencing any of the following? Depressed mood?"

"Only about being stuck in here," she quipped.

"Racing thoughts? Excessive worry?"

"I'm worried you're going to keep me in here."

"Anxiety attacks? Hallucinations? Avoidance? Concentration or Memory Problems?"

"I don't know how anyone's supposed to concentrate on anything with this much Ativan in their system."

"Sleep pattern disturbance, Avoidance, Loss of interest in things you once enjoyed?"

"I'm not _allowed_ to do anything I enjoy in here."

"Change in Appetite?"

"The food sucks."

"Excessive Guilt? Excessive Energy?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"Suspiciousness? Increased irritability?"

"Irritability. That I definitely have. This _place_ is very irritating. I assure you _that_ will clear up the moment I walk out the door."

"Crying spells, fatigue, impulsivity, risky behavior, increased libido?"

"What?"

" _De_ creased libido?"

"I have no idea how my libido comes into any of this," she laughed, a little taken aback.

"Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable Robin?"

"What? No. No no no. I just don't understand the _diagnostic_ value of discussing it."

"If nothing's changed, there isn't any. According to your original forms, you… Oh, I see. You're not sexually active."

Root couldn't suppress the laughter that burst forth, doubling over in her chair, with probably the most genuine case of the giggles she'd had in a very long time. Of course Finch would assume something like that about her. Poor repressed little Harold.

"Is something funny?"

"Who told you _that_ ? _Uncle Harold_?"

"I see," the nurse nodded, taking it in stride. That an man could overestimated the chastity of a woman in his family wasn't that peculiar. "So… for the sake of the paperwork, we should change that to a _yes_ on sexually active… and are you in a relationship of any kind? Committed or otherwise?"

"Sadly no," Root replied, finally succeeding in suppressing her laughter. "My lifestyle doesn't allow for that: always on the road. I have to take it where I can get it. I suppose that's why I was a little… _concerned_ about the libido questions. No one would question it if I were a man, but people can be very puritanical about a woman who's not in a relationship having any kind of... fun."

"So, multiple sex partners. How frequently would you say you're… finding it where you can get it? How many people in say, a year?"

"Once, maybe twice a month. Nothing excessive or deviant about it at all. It's just, normal, non-repressed adult behavior."

"In pursuit of this, have you engaged in any of the following risky sexual behaviors? Anonymous sex? Unprotected sex? Sex under the influence of drugs?"

"Maaaaaaybe," she replied, coyly, not keen to discuss details.

"Which?"

"Take your pick," Root shrugged, rolling her eyes. "Any and all… but nothing's _changed_ , so no diagnostic value, right?"

"Actually for those, there is. We call that _risky_ sexual behavior. Adult or not, it's irresponsible to get into bed with people you don't know the medical history of, without protection, and/or under the influence of substances that impair your judgement. You're running a high risk of STDs or pregnancy."

"Not as high as you'd think," the words left her mouth in a laugh, before she'd thought about them.

"Why is that?"

Her laughter abruptly stopped and Root blinked momentarily, realizing she'd said that last out loud, a little crack in her facade, a tiny miscalculation. She sighed, silently cursing the Ativan. With a clear mind she'd never have committed such a slip of the tongue. "Because I… don't… _like…_ men," she admitted. It wasn't an easy thing for her to say aloud. She preferred to keep that sort of thing more close to the vest, considering the risks associated. "Not that that's anyone's business. I'm pretty sure that stopped being considered a mental disorder in 1973. So that's not really something that's going to be relevant to all of this," she gestured vaguely indicating the hospital, "right?"

"Right," the nurse agreed, "It does explain a bit, however."

" _Excuse me_?"

"Well under the admissions form originally entered, our uncle specifically says that he'd never seen you ' _so much as look at a man in that way_ ,' which… you wouldn't. I'm assuming he doesn't know you're gay?"

"Well it's not exactly something I spread around," the levity had left her entirely by this point, "I was born and raised in Texas… that's just not a thing that's done there, or it wasn't then. I don't know I haven't been back. Although he's clearly not paying attention if he hasn't seen me _flirt_ with men." her tone became a little lighter. "It's amazing what they'll do if you show them even a chance that they'll get lucky… but that's all it is, flirting. Nothing that would ever get me pregnant."

"That doesn't mean you aren't still at risk."

"I didn't say there was no risk, just considerably less than you thought. Unless you count the risk of getting jumped in a dark alley in Texas for… not _liking_ men." She couldn't bring herself to say it any other way.

"I hope you won't take offense, but we **are** going to have to arrange for you to have a single. On most units this wouldn't be the case, but given this is our highest security area, we don't want to risk any altercations that might come of rooming you with someone who might even _think_ they're being hit on or ogled or some such. It's for your safety as much as theirs."

"You'll get no argument from me on that. I didn't want a roommate anyway… but it's not something I want the other patients knowing about either. I'm a very private person."

"Not too private to finish this assessment, I hope," Gloria tried to make light, but the joke fell somewhat flat. Root gave her a patronizing smile for her attempt however. "Do you exercise regularly?"

"I don't own a car, subways smell, taxis are expensive, and in cities besides New York sometimes that's not even an option. I get in plenty of walking, jogging, general locomotion. Does this unit do walks? I've seen people walking outside."

"No. This is a high security unit Robin. You won't be going outside except on the sun deck. We do have aerobics on Saturdays if you like."

"Hmmmm."

"Now we know you don't smoke now, have you ever?"

"I've tried it once or twice, but I've never been a smoker. Not even marijuana. The smoke… " she pulled a face.

"How many days per week do you drink alcohol?"

"Per week? Hard to say, better to gauge by month… probably eight or nine days, but no set amount per week. Could be spread out across the month, or all bunched up somewhere in there. Some weeks a lot, some weeks not at all."

"On days you do drink, what's the top and bottom of your range?"

"Between one and three usually, though if there's a long event I can get up to five or so, at a rate of about one an hour. One drink takes one hour to get out of your system, so it's just maintenance at that point."

"Would five be the most you've consumed on one night in the past three months?"

"I'm pretty sure I topped that in a bar in Soho back in March. I was going one for one on vodka shots with a Russian named Petrov. I needed his trust and that was the fastest way to get it."

"Okaaaay…" Gloria replied, skeptically.

"It wasn't any fun though. Vodka tastes like paint thinner going down, and worse coming up."

"Have you or anyone you know ever thought that you should drink less?"

"No, at least not that I know of. I'm not a mind reader. But no one's said anything."

"Have you used any street drugs in the past three months?"

"Street? No… _party_ , yes."

"So that's a yes."

"If you say so," Root shrugged. To her there was a stark distinction between the two, but she didn't want to argue about it.

"Methamphetamine? Cocaine? Heroin? Methadone?"

" _No_ ," she furrowed her brow in disgust. " _Those_ are street drugs, well aside from methadone, but they're all heavily addictive. That's how you wind up a junkie under a bridge. No needles, no smoking and no snorting. Ugh," she shook herself slightly as if to be rid of such an idea.

"GHB, Ketamine, Benzodiazepines?"

"GHB is a date rape drug, the last thing I want is to fall in a K hole, and only the Ativan _you_ put me on," she listed the reasons, as if explaining to a small child.

"Oxycodone or other non prescribed painkillers?

"Housewife heroine? May as well take street drugs. No."

"You already said you don't do marijuana."

"I said I don't smoke it," Root corrected "I don't go seeking it out either but if someone turns up offering pot brownies I can't honestly say I'm certain to turn one down. Really depends on if I've got the time to spare. You can loose about 4 hours to one of those things."

"Ritalin, Adderall or other prescription stimulant pills."

"Oh… now would have forget about _those_ ," she admitted, lightly, "To be honest I don't even really think of that as _doing drugs_. You don't get high on those, they're just helpful sometimes when you can't afford to sleep and Coffee isn't cutting it. A lot of the time I can run for _days_ on six hours, but no one can do that _all_ the time, so sometimes a little pharmacological pick me up is in order. I'm _very_ busy."

"Sleeping pills?"

"Very _very_ busy. Too busy to take anything that's going to make me drowsy."

"LSD or other hallucinogens?"

"Yesssss," she grinned, " _Those_ are _party_ drugs. Acid, Shrooms, _Ecstasy_. That's my favorite. Have you ever had sex on Ecstasy?"

"Can't say that I have… how often would you say you use these kinds of drugs?"

"Like I said before, once, maybe twice a month," she answered as if it were obvious.

"So… aside from prescription stimulants and the occasional pot brownie, you only use drugs when you're having sex?" Gloria asked, because it _hadn't_ been.

"Well… proximally," she tossed her head to one side, and left it tilted. "It's not like I go out, pick someone up, and then stop them 'hang on while I take this pill.' That would be pretty weird, don't you think? I'm definitely high quite a time beforehand."

"So… when you're _seeking_ sex then."

"Mhhmm."

"So… then you _do_ take drugs somewhat more often than you…" Gloria didn't finish the sentence.

"Oh no. I quite nearly always get what I'm after. Can't remember the last time I didn't. You see, there are these _parties_ . Very exclusive. _Invitation only_ ." She was clearly proud of being invited. "You know the kind of parties I'm talking about," she waggled her eyebrows, and didn't elaborate. "And I'm very skilled and very good looking… so… it's not really a challenge. The only downsides are the music is terrible and there are too many sweaty men who think girls... _playing_ together is the start of a threesome with them. Ick."

"Right… okay… uh… back to substances. What's your relationship with caffeine like?"

"Like water. I suppose that's probably why I sometimes need something a little stronger when I get tired. Do you have coffee on this unit? There's no coffee except at meal downstairs, and it's all decaf."

"We have caffeinated coffee available in the kitchen 6am to 6pm, but until you have level 3 you'll need to be accompanied to the kitchen. 6pm to 9pm, we only have decaf. We want you to sleep."

"Fun," she said, in a tone that suggested it wasn't.

"Now… have you ever had feelings or thoughts that you didn't want to live?"

Glancing off to the side with only her eyes, Root's debated inwardly if she should answer the question honestly or not and, given the timescale, decided that perhaps being honest in this respect would give her more credibility elsewhere, without impacting her current chances of release.

"In the past," she turned her eyes back to Gloria, "but not now."

"How often do you have these thoughts?"

"I haven't thought about it in about ten years now. It's something of the past. An adolescent phase," she huffed out a small laugh at that. She had always been quite put out when they'd told her it was a phase at the time… and now here she was dismissing it as such herself.

"Not at all since then?"

"No. I don't think I could contemplate that anymore at this point. I have so many other options. When you're a kid, and you have rules and limitations, and no money, and no rights, it's easy to feel trapped like it's the only way out, but adulthood has treated me pretty well. I'm not fenced in anymore. If I don't like my situation. I can change it. I do vaguely recall thinking several times while I was, _trapped_ inside my head, catatonic I mean, that if my condition did not improve I would prefer to die, but I don't think that really counts. I wouldn't want to live in a persistent vegetative state either, but that's not pathological."

"When you _were_ thinking of it, have you ever thought of _how_ you would kill yourself."

"Eat a bullet," she answered a little too quickly. "Texas again," she added, as if that were an explanation for the speed of her reply. "We like guns. I'm sure there are other ways, but… that's kind of the first solution that comes to mind for most things in Texas. Even pest control. Why use a mousetrap or rat poison when a 22 would do?"

"Do you have _access_ to a gun?"

"I'm pretty sure Uncle Harry isn't going to give mine back after I pointed it at him," she replied, conveniently leaving out how easy it would be for her to procure a replacement once she was out.

"Have you ever _tried_ to kill or harm yourself?"

"No no no, if I'd ever actually _tried_ to eat a bullet, we wouldn't be having this conversation" she danced neatly around the second part of the question. "That's a pretty foolproof method. I think everyone's considered death as a solution fleetingly at some point, especially in some bout of teenaged ennui, but that's all it ever is for most of us."

"Have you ever had outpatient psychiatric care?"

"Not unless the school counselor counts. I got sent there… more than a few times. It did more harm than good."

"Why is that?"

"Because I couldn't _tell_ him anything."

"Is this related to the kidnapping you witnessed when you were… 12?"

Root nodded. "After the first few people I told blew me off of threatened me, I got the message. He figured I was broken up over her being gone or some nonsense instead of pissed off that everyone were a turning out to be a bunch of blind useless jerks, and he kept poking after things with my mother, like that was relevant at all… So I've never really had much use for psychologists you see. Useless really. What's the point? That's why I'd just as soon be off these drugs and out the door."

"And have you ever been inpatient? Before here?"

"Noooo… no I would never let that happen I'd I were aware, and now that I am, I'd just as soon leave."

"What was your relationship like with your parents? I guess in your case just your mother..."

"This is an intake question?"

"Just the outline. Good, bad, indifferent."

"Better than you'd assume, given what was on that first page. I never even knew who my father was. It was just us against the world," Root smiled, in fond remembrance.

"How old were you when you left home?"

"Twenty three. The day after I buried her. She was the only reason to stay in that hell hole town."

"Any trauma history besides witnessing the kidnapping?"

"That wasn't a trauma. It sucked, but I didn't get all weepy over it or anything. I'm _not_ damaged. I'm sure it was traumatic for _her,"_ Root's gaze slipped off to the side and into the distance again, "She got raped and died. I just got called a liar. No big deal." She looked back to Gloria. "I got smart quick, stopped talking about it, and then it just blew over for me."

"Fair enough," the nurse decided against pressing the matter, "And you dropped out of high school as soon as you turned 18, correct?"

"It was a waste of time. I was smarter than most of the teachers, and we had bills to pay. I got a job. It's not like I was hanging out on the street corner smoking my life away. I had things to get done, and 8 hours of listening to idiots tell me things I could learn on my own faster wasn't really worth it."

"And you taught yourself enough computer programming that you've been employed in that field, yes?"

"Quite well employed, when I choose to be," Root replied, "When you make that much money at something, you can afford to take considerable breaks between jobs."

"You've never been in the military, correct?"

"Me? In the military? Nooooooo. That would not work out."

"We actually _have_ your criminal record, so… I can skip the questions about your legal record… and that leaves us with Religion. I assume you're religious, given the incident with the payphone… Christian?"

"No," Root replied, "I mean nominally I'm a Baptist. I was born into a baptist family, but I've never really believed in a creator God. No one designed us. We're an accident of evolution. The universe is cold, dark, infinite and chaotic. There's never been a plan-"

"Then who-"

"Until _recently_. There is no supernatural deity, but there is someone with a plan for all of us," she breathed deeply, with a smile, "An actual _verifiable_ entity that came into existence long after we did, with a capacity beyond ours, and the will to _save_ humanity from itself."

"Okay Robin, you realize that's the sort of thing that makes us feel like you need to stay here."

"I don't see why. Religious beliefs, by definition, are excepted from delusion."

The nurse didn't reply, merely sliding the second piece of paper across the table with a pen. Root rolled her eyes and took the pen, initialing at the bottom of the front side, and after checking what was written for Religion ("Other") signing on the back.

"Are we done here?"


	2. New Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root gets situated on the Unit...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn... these chapters are turning out way longer than the ones for Troubleshooting a Kernel Panic... Sorry about that.

"Alright, let me show you to the day room," Gloria rose from the table, putting the papers into a medical file, and producing from beneath it a blue sheet of paper, and a coral one. "You already have the patient handbook from downstairs, so you're just going to need these. The blue one is our privilege levels on this unit. They're different from the ones downstairs since we're higher security. We usually start people at level 1, but as an internal transfer we take recommendations from your previous unit into account. They recommended 3, but Dr. Carmichael wasn't comfortable with that, so we split the difference and you're coming in at 2.

"The other one is our unit schedule, we've marked off what groups we have you assigned for this week, there are some spaces with choices on the weekends." Gloria ushered her out the door and continued talking as they made their way down the hall. "This is a higher participation unit than the one you've been on, so we have many more activities, but you will also be expected to be more responsible for managing your time here. No one will be chasing you down if you do not show up for your activities, but we will take notice, and that's not how you earn privilege levels. Also if you do not show up for med distribution then you'll be considered non-compliant, and as you're on a court order if you attempt to resist-"

"I get it in the ass," Root finished the nurse's sentence, "Yes I'll do my best to avoid that."

"This is your first day on the unit, however, so if you'd like to take some time to adjust, it won't be a mark against you if you decide not to attend things we have you down for today. You could settle into your room if you had one, but we're going to have to rearrange slightly to get you that single. I'd suggest you try and make it to one or two of your activities at least, however. You're an internal transfer, so adjustment oughtn't take that long. We'll be getting you your belongings back after lunch when you have a room and once we've had a chance to go through all of them and ensure that nothing you can't have is in there, normally it would be until morning, but you don't have much and, as I keep saying: you came from inside, so it will be quicker."

"The privileges are different, but what about the contraband list?" Root asked. "I really _really_ don't have much in here, pretty much just clothes," she pouted, "and I was thinking I might call my Uncle and ask him to send some stuff along now that I'm awake and able to use them, I just don't want to have him send anything I'm not allowed by accident. I know computers are allowed on a case by case downstairs, are we able to do that up here too?"

"No. No computers," Gloria replied, abruptly. "Personal electronics like music players or e-books are on a case by case basis, but _nothing_ that can be used to access the outside. There's a desktop in the day room that you can access to in increments of 20 minutes when you have level 4, but it is monitored, just like the phones."

"Anything is better than nothing," Root smiled, hiding her frustration, "It's like being a concert pianist who's not allowed to touch a piano. I'll play chopsticks if that's what's allowed, just to reconnect to the keys."

"The main contraband list is the same. I'll remind you however that books are also on a case by case, and what titles are approved downstairs may not be approved up here. No one wants a copy of Catcher in the Rye wandering around _this_ unit."

"Holden Caulfield is a clueless little brat anyway," Root replied. "All self pity and no meaningful action toward improving himself."

"Right…"

"You've never read it… have you. Don't worry, you're not missing anything," they rounded the corner. The dayroom wasn't much different than the one downstairs, except that it had more televisions and fewer decorations. This unit on the whole was distinctly more prison like than the one she'd come from.

"You can make yourself comfortable here for the time being. They're already in activity block one, so even if you wanted to, there's nothing for you till activity block two. You can use the television if you like, since you have no room yet. Normally you can't during activity time, but just for this block." Gloria explained. "Do you have any questions?"

"No, I think I understand, but… I don't suppose I could get some of that coffee while I'm waiting?"

"I'll send over a tech and have them bring you to the kitchen. Don't make me regret it."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Root replied, sitting down cross legged on the couch and flipping on the TV, scrolling through the channels before finally landing on a documentary about cracking the Enigma machines used to send coded messages during World War II.

"You're not allowed to watch that," a voice interrupted, shortly thereafter.

"Of course I'm not," Root sighed, "Everything has restrictions here, doesn't it? Why should TV be any different." She turned in her seat and sized up the young man in light green scrubs. "Cryptanalysis documentaries are far too interesting for me to be allowed to partake."

"Crypto what?"

"Code breaking."

"Oh… uh… no the problem is it's a World War II Documentary. No _war_ shows, crime shows, disaster movies, news, or anything else dark and negative."

"What does that leave us with?"

"Sitcoms, Soap Operas, Family Dramas, and Game shows, mostly, and kids programming. Disney channel runs movies a lot."

"I'll pass," Root shut off the TV. "Robin, and you are?"

"Jerry. Gina said you wanted some coffee?"

"Thanks Jerry," Root stood up, and followed where he beckoned.

"First time?" he asked as they walked.

"Sort of, yeah. I transferred from downstairs, but before that, never been stuck in a place like this."

"Which unit?"

"E-Unit: Catatonia and Dissociative," she replied, "But I'm not anymore… so here I am. It shouldn't take them long to let me out of here. It's just going to take them a little while to be convinced I'm fine now. But… well since I wasn't exactly _present_ down there till day before yesterday, I'm still getting the lay of the land."

"It's gonna bite," he admitted. "You don't get more restricted than up here. You can't touch that."

Root drew her hand back from the coffee pot, and sighed again, glancing up at the ceiling, as Jerry poured the coffee into a paper cup, and set it on the table of one of the one piece welded dining booths along the wall.

"Sugar or cream?" he asked.

"Just sugar," Root replied, and he tossed a few paper packets of it on the table. "This I can touch?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks…." she didn't sound much like she meant it, but picked up two of them, tearing them open and pouring them into the cup. "You got a stir?" Jerry nodded and brought one over, awkwardly waiting for her to return it when she was done, before handing her a lid. She pressed it into place and brought the cup to her lips, taking a long draw of the lukewarm coffee. Of course it wasn't hot. That would be a hazard.

"Good?"

"A bit cold, but it's coffee," she replied, shrugging, and exited the kitchen at his gesture.

"You seem pretty chill for this unit," Jerry joked, walking her back to the day room. "Still waters run deep?"

"Something like that," Root replied, turning back into the day room, as he continued back to the nurse's station. "Thanks for the coffee, Jerry."

She wandered back over to the day room and put the TV back on, flipping channels until she came to a channel showing reruns of Jeopardy which she figured was probably ok to watch, and at least somewhat intellectually stimulating.

* * *

 

By the time first block ended, Root had finished her coffee, disposed of the cup, and meandered over to the hallway near the nurses station. Gloria has tried to convince her that she should go to her scheduled activity for that block, "Wellness" Group, reminding her that her option to use the TV during group time was no longer in effect since she now had the chance to go where she was meant to be, but Root declined, instead requesting that the nurses checking over her belongings let her have her patient handbook back to study, using it as an excuse to loiter around the nurses station and people watch while the other patients changed blocks.

It was hard to get a read on all the people in the ward in the short time between activities, but she estimated the population of the unit at around 20 patients, with slightly more men than women, and everyone quite a bit more on edge than people had generally been on the E-Unit. She supposed that was to be expected however, since she'd moved from a unit full of people who were outside their bodies much of the time, to the unit full of people considered to be in need of the most possible supervision and control. She keyed in on a few particular patients that stood out to her, a tall portly man with a beard who bullied his way through the hall forcing others to move for him, a blonde girl with a thousand yard stare and bandaged arms, a skeletal brunette with short patchy hair of no particular consistent length, a youngish man with sandy hair who stood in a military 'at ease' position every time he came to a stop, a man in his 30s with no fewer than half a dozen rainbow bracelets down his left arm… cataloging all this information for later use.

When they'd all disappeared into their activities or rooms, she wandered back to the day room, and upon rounding the corner balked momentarily at the sight of a petite brunette in a dark grey hoodie with a long straight utilitarian ponytail trailing down her back. She shook her head to dispel the shock and silently rolled her eyes at herself as she moved to the couch, coming around to see the front of the other woman, where her short blunt bangs, were clearly visible and Root could see that she was tightly clutching a tattered white rabbit doll, which could only nominally be described as stuffed anymore. Noticing Root, she emitted a high pitched squeak, and nearly jumped out of her skin, before moving to put the couch between them again. How this fragile looking creature could have struck her as similar to Shaw, if only for a moment, was a mystery to her now. She was wearing Pink Hello Kitty Yoga pants for crying out loud.

"Sorry," Root apologized perfunctorily, as she pulled her legs up onto the couch and opened her handbook, ignoring the intensity with which the other woman now stared at her, green gray eyes sunken and fearful.

"I'm not going," she said, firmly. "You can't make me."

"That makes two of us," Root muttered, already becoming absorbed in the reading. If she was going to play this place, it helped to know the parameters.

"What?"

"Two of us _not going_ to Wellness Group," she looked up. "That's what you're talking about right?"

"You have Wellness? I wish I had Wellness," the words spilled out of the other woman rapidly. "I have Nutrition… they're trying to make me fat. They put all the skinny girls in Nutrition. You're skinny. You should be in Nutrition too. It's not fair you get Wellness."

"It really doesn't matter _what_ we have," Root shrugged, "Since neither of us is going."

"I guess not." She sat on the far end of the second couch, as far from Root as possible, bringing her knees up to her chin. "I'm Justine."

"Robin," Root replied.

"You're new."

"Yup."

"Don't get too comfortable. Lots of people start here, but nobody really stays… except transfers. I'm a transfer… I was on D-Unit before. Eating Disorders."

"I wouldn't have guessed…" Root replied, somewhat sarcastically. She had surmised as much when she was rambling about Nutrition group making her fat.

"I know… I'm too fat to have ED."

"That was sarcasm. It's kind of obvious."

"Really?" she seemed a little too happy about that. "How'd you get here? No… let me guess… took a whole bottle of pills?"

"No, I'm not remotely suicidal."

"Well it's not ED, or you'd be in Nutrition with the rest of us… anxiety cases and depressives don't start on M unless they're suicidal… schizophrenic?"

"Not that I know of," Root replied, "But I didn't start here. I'm a transfer too."

"And you haven't already read that thing to death?"

"I wasn't really in any state at the time," Root replied, wryly. "I transferred from E."

"Dissociative and Catatonia." Justine nodded, "So wait… does that mean you're like… multiple personality or something? Is there like an evil Robin that's going to come out at some point and try and hurt me?"

"No," Root laughed a little, "I was catatonic. This is the only Robin there is, besides which the whole Sybil thing isn't really happening down there. It's different to that. They sent me up here when I came out of it because I have a criminal record… and I'm not particularly interested in hurting anyone at the moment… though if you _need_ someone hurt, let me know."

"I'll remember that," Justine replied smiling a little. Root smiled back for a moment, before turning her attention back to the handbook.

"You're supposed to be in nutrition," Gloria reprimanded walking into the room, breaking the silence. "If you're not going to your activity you're going to your room."

"But she-"

"Hasn't been assigned a room yet," Gloria interrupted, "Nutrition or your room Justine. Those are your choices." Justine looked like she was going to try and protest again for a moment, and then stood from the couch with a huff and stomped out of the room with a gait not dissimilar to an angry three year old. "Don't engage with her if she comes back," Gloria added, to Root, apparently not yet perturbed at her lack of participation.

"It says here we're entitled to writing materials," Root indicated the page she was reading, "If I was looking to get a hold of some of those, how would I go about that here? I have some organization I'd like to do, lists and such…"

"Ask at the nurses station, they should have paper and markers," Gloria replied, and with a nod, wandered off in the direction Justine had gone, presumably to ensure that she was in one of the two places she had been told to go.

Root did as instructed and was provided several sheets of unlined paper, and a blue medium point marker pen, which she took to one of several small wooden tables in the day room to take notes on her reading… loopholes would need to be found, understood, and utilized if she was going to get through even another couple of weeks in here without going completely stir crazy, particularly since she already decided she had no intention of going to _any_ of the things they had her scheduled for. At the very least they'd had the sense not to put her in any of the drug related groups, which she'd been a little concerned they might try, but thankfully they were in fact able to differentiate between addiction and social drug use… though if she had to guess, she would assume that the 'Wellness' group probably discouraged that sort of behavior as well, right alongside eating too much aspartame and processed snacks. That hadn't stopped them from putting her in 'Anger Management' which she found absurd considering she pretty much laughed her way through whatever the world could throw at her, 'Trauma Recovery,' as there was any real trauma in her life, and 'Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,' which if she remembered her research for masquerading as a therapist correctly, was mostly used for anxiety and depression neither of which she had. They did have her down for a few different expressive groups… music, art, writing… but considering she was fairly certain she wouldn't be allowed to just, make what she wanted, but would instead be given some bizarre Freudian constraints so they could psychoanalyze her art… she wasn't about that either.

Also to stave off mental atrophy and boredom, once she'd finished looking into loopholes, her next point of action was to work on a list of books to read, so she could have the titles checked. Computers and computer equipment were out of the question, but Harold had in one of his better choices, at least given her an identity that was every bit as intricately tied to technology as her own, which at the very least meant she could attempt to select some reading material that she would actually enjoy.

The first few books that came to mind were a few of the books she'd been reading on Artificial intelligence, _Gödel, Escher, Bach; On the Origin of Objects, A Discipline of Programming, Superintelligence_ and _The Most Human Human,_ then a few good old Stevenson cyberpunk standbys _Snow Crash_ and _Cryptonomicon._ After some consideration she added _Zero History,_ the third book of a Gibson trilogy she'd only read two parts of, and since she'd been meaning to read it for over a decade, Margaret Atwood's _Cat's Eye_ as well. She was tempted to ask for a copy of _Puzzles for Hackers_ , but it seemed like that might be a little too on the nose, so she just added a note asking if recreational math puzzle books were acceptable… she couldn't think why they wouldn't be but she also couldn't come up with any titles off the top of her head.

When the second block let out, she fell in with the other patients making their way to the dining room, looking forward to a spot of lunch, but when she arrived there, the room was in comparison to the E-Unit dining hall, nearly unbearable. Where before the atmosphere had been one not dissimilar to an office canteen, here… it was more akin to a High School cafeteria, people jostling for the seats they wanted, you can't sit at my table, someone took more than one jello and that's a problem for the guy who got none. Add to that the hysteria going on at the back left two tables, where Justine and seven other women including the girl with the patchy hair, were corralled sitting each with an identical fixed plate in front of them, having apparently not been allowed to select their own meals, and most of them showing just _exactly_ what they were in the hospital for. When she reached the head of the line, she quickly grabbed a short sub, an apple, and a carton of milk, and made a bee-line for the door.

"And where do you think you're going with that?" asked a nurse she hadn't yet met, standing in the doorway.

"Anywhere but here," she replied. "This… whatever this is, is too much," she gestured with the hand holding the apple, the other being too full holding both sandwich and drink. "There are literally people screaming over there, and everyone gives me the hairy eyeball if I try to sit at their table, and I'd just as soon have some peace with my meal."

"You're the new girl, aren't you? Robin?" he looked down to check his clipboard.

"I'm hardly a _girl_ ," she replied, "I'm thirty-three years old. I think you can dispense with the diminutives."

"They don't have you on controlled meals yet," he muttered, "So you're not _required_ to be here. But if you're going to take food out of the dining room you'll have to eat it in your room… since you don't have kitchen privileges."

"Would if I had one," She took a bite of the apple, not failing to miss the implication in his 'yet' and continued to speak now with the food still in her mouth. "But they apparently need to shuffle some people to make space for me."

"Oh, right." he nodded, "Cindy is packing up right now to move in with Alana, they should have your room ready by the end of lunch. For now I guess you can go to the chairs in the hall by the nurses station." he stepped back to let her by. "So they can keep an eye on you."

"Suit yourself," she said after swallowing, before taking one more pointed bite at him as she left the room.  Awkward as it was trying to eat with no table, the hallway was still quite preferable to the dining room and all it's chaos. She tried to remind herself again, that all she had to do was endure a couple weeks of this, prove she was perfectly fine, and they'd surely let her out…. and if that failed, well she could probably find a way to escape, though that would take time. She'd have to earn access to the computer to do it, from there it would be child's play.

* * *

 

True to what she was told, both her pillowcase of personal effects and her room assignment materialized shortly after lunch. The room was almost identical to the one she'd had on the floor below, if that room had been cut in half, she'd apparently had a roommate for a week and a half of her time on the previous unit, but not during the times she had been aware. She tossed the pillowcase on the bed, next to the folded set of sheets and blankets and began unpacking what little she had into the drawers below it.

The clothes that she presumed Finch (it had to have been Finch, in these colors) had picked out for her, were fairly decent. It was clear they'd taken their sizing cues of what she'd been wearing when everything went to shit but none of it was really to _her_ style, but instead, she supposed the style of the fictitious Robin Farrow. The one choice she had absolutely no complaint about was the flowing long grey cardigan that went with absolutely everything she had. If she had her druthers she'd have preferred it in black, or maybe royal purple, but the fabric was soft, the cut was perfect and if she was perfectly honest about it, which she never ever would be if anyone asked, the sheer volume of the thing provided a sense of privacy and safety that was otherwise lacking in Ridge Stone.

Besides that she had been provided 8 serviceable shirts and four sets of trousers, all identical in style, differing only in color, a quick way to build a wardrobe, and one button down sleeveless shirt that they tell her she was wearing on admission. The pants and undergarments she had been wearing when it had all come crashing down, all of them black, were also among her meager possessions but her top and leather jacket were missing as well as her shoes. The latter, she found out later were being held by the hospital as personal effects not allowed on the ward, but her jacket and shirt never made it to the hospital. She was disappointed, at that, but considering she'd been shot while wearing them, she supposed they weren't really in any condition to wear anyway.

The undergarments she'd been provided were also passable in cut and size, and while the panties were all a stark white, someone (Shaw? It had to be a woman right?) had the sense to ensure that the three cheap bras she was left with were nude instead, so that they didn't show through the tops, but she had been chagrined to realize upon regaining consciousness that  there were absolutely _no_ socks in her drawers, (although the shoes she'd been provided did not require any) and she'd been left with two pairs of yolk neck gingham pullover pajamas, which while not as unbearable as being stuck with some floral nighty, were still dowdy enough that she was certain even her grandmother wouldn't be caught dead in them.

She paused in her unpacking with a sigh, and wandered over to the desk, picking up the pen and starting a list of things she was going to need to obtain, particularly since she was fairly certain that the luggage she'd left in her hotel room in New York, and everything contained within, were now forfeit, so whatever she had with her here, would be all she had when she left here as well. It wasn't the first time she'd lost everything, but it was the first time in a while, and definitely the first where shopping for replacements was going to be severely impeded. First order of business: socks, and passable pajamas.

The toothbrush and toothpaste she had was adequate, and unfortunately for her prefered dental hygiene regimen mouthwash was apparently contraband (likely because it could be ingested to get drunk) but the hairbrush she was given was flat, and she wasn't going to be able to put any proper curl in her hair that way, so when she returned from putting the dental implements on the bathroom sink, a round barrel hairbrush went on the list as well directly ahead of her prefered brand of shampoo, conditioner and body wash so she could at least _smell_ like herself. Bringing her personal hygiene regiment back in line with what it had been before she was stuck here was at the least one part of 'Root' that she could work into 'Robin' without too much trouble. Hair dye would not be necessary, thankfully, as she'd stopped trying to maintain her childhood hue quite some time prior, when Hannah's proper burial gave her leave to let go of the last vestiges of Sam Groves. Unfortunately shaving razors, she'd learned downstairs were not a thing one could have of their own prefered type… one could only check out the hospital's chosen brand of ridiculous safety razor and use it under close scrutiny. She'd nearly balked when they told her that, but considering she'd awakened from several weeks of catatonia feeling like a sasquatch, she'd swallowed her pride and taken the embarrassment at being watched as a necessary indignity.

It wasn't that she hadn't been someone else for a few months before, so much as that in this place it had to be upheld 24/7 which even in the limited time she'd been lucid it had already started to become incredibly onerous. Being a skilled manipulator didn't make it any easier to keep up the rouse for days straight without being able to kick back in her hotel room for a few hours and just… be. If anything the detail and effort required to calculate how best to portray a personality as far removed from her own as her acts often were, only added to the exhaustion factor. Bringing as much of 'Root' into 'Robin' as she could was going to be a necessary prophylactic measure, since this was going to last at least another couple of weeks.

The next thing that went directly onto the list was a bottle of black nail polish. Although a younger, somewhat gothically inclined patient on the E-Unit named Sarah had done her nails the night before, she knew that it would begin to chip eventually, and looking down to see her own hands _looking_ like her own hands had turned out to be more of a relief than she'd expected it to be. That was something else of 'Root' that 'Robin' could easily share. The more the better.

Coming to the bottom of the pillowcase, now empty, she sighed and slid it onto the pillow. The only thing that seemed to be missing from when she was downstairs was the large tortoiseshell jaw clip that someone had been using to put her hair up when she was unable to care for herself. She hadn't been using it anyway. She prefered her hair down. After a moment she went back to look over the list for anything else she might need in the time she had left here… anything that wasn't already provided, but only one thing came to mind. She couldn't blame Finch for being ignorant to the fact that she was still prone to sleeping with a plush toy, (none in particular… she lost them quite often enough, but she'd cycled through several in the Uglydoll line since it's debut 8 years prior, as they were reliably similar in tactile experience to one another.) In fact it was probably for the better that he _was_ . After a few moments of internal debate however, she decided not to add one to the list either. She wasn't going to be here that long. She could get one after she left and _no one_ else would have to know either. It wasn't exactly a very… dignified thing.

After she made the bed up she found herself with an extra pillowcase, since a clean one had also been provided. Seeing as how she'd just changed beds entirely however, keeping the one from downstairs just seemed more comfortable. She borrowed some scotch tape from the nurses station to tack up her schedule, and when returning it, requested several more sheets of paper returning with them to her desk, where she sat for a time staring out the window before putting marker to paper once more.

 _using static System.Console_ ;


	3. First Sessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root confers with BOTH of her therapists...

"Hello Robin, I'm Dr. Carmichael," he looked up from his desk as Root entered the room, closing the door carefully behind her. Despite her determination not to go to any of her assigned groups, she knew she had to go to her individual sessions on Fridays to speak to the Doctor who would decide when to discharge her. "You can call me Ron if that's more comfortable. I've been looking over your file since you transferred up here on Wednesday, and I'm very pleased to finally meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine, I'm sure _Doctor_." Root replied, congenially but pointedly declining the offer to call him by his first name. "I'm hoping we can make this short and sweet," she continued, taking a seat "I wouldn't want to waste your time. I'm not really having any problems anymore since I recovered from my… mental vacation, so mostly what I'm looking to get done here at this point is to taper off the Ativan I've been taking for the catatonia, which is no longer present, so I can leave here with a clear head and a clean bloodstream. The Pharmacologist started switching me over to Diazepam yesterday, so that's a start."

"Okay well, Robin, we are going to need to do some more work than that before you can leave here. _Before_ you were catatonic, you pointed a gun at your uncle, and according to the nurses downstairs you threatened to kill one of the other patients with a ballpoint pen… and when they searched your room they found out you had one. You're not supposed to have pens."

"Hyperbole," Root replied. "I mean I _did_ have a pen, one gets sick of writing with markers, but I was just providing him _incentive_ not to try and harm any of the other patients again. _He's_ the violent one. Ask them. Perhaps not my wisest move, but not a credible threat either."

"Mmhmm… and the gun?"

"Couldn't really say what that was about," Root replied, tilting her head and looking at the ceiling with a faraway smile. "That's… a foggy area in my memory."

"We can work on that," he nodded, "try and get to the root of what happened there and maybe we can help you to work out better ways to solve conflict than waving a gun around and having a break with reality."

"Aiming, not waving," her gaze returned to the doctor, momentarily sharp again. "I remember that much. I was aiming, _very_ carefully."

"That… really doesn't help matters Robin. The point is that you have unsafe ways of handling conflict, you have a problem and you need to work that out before you're going to be going anywhere."

"I disagree. I _had_ a problem, past tense, and now I'm alright," her eyes softened, "No more problem."

"According to your file, you've been speaking to a dead telephone line downstairs You're talking with people that aren't there. That's not the sort of behavior that makes one think that you're no longer having a problem Robin."

"Well… I was also dropping in and out of catatonia at the time, on a fairly regular basis." Root was pretty sure that The Machine had blanked out it's half of the conversations for a _reason_ , and that it had not simply _forgotten_ to call the past two nights since she'd transferred to this unit, so for now disavowing the reality of the conversations seemed to be a necessary lie to convince them she wasn't hallucinating. "I don't think that will be continuing."

"I'm very glad to hear that," he nodded. "I can see that you declined to make any goals with Gloria when you arrived, and that does concern me. So I'd really like it if you can try and come up with a few before the next time we meet. We'll be seeing one another every Friday."

"I'm honestly not sure what it is I should be trying to do," she replied, "Since I'm fine now. I mean, it might take a week or two, but I expect I can demonstrate to your satisfaction the fact that I'm completely fine by then, considering I _am_."

"Doesn't what happened to you concern you at all?"

"Why dwell on an isolated event in an otherwise entirely normal life?"

"I wouldn't exactly call your life normal," he held up her folder momentarily, "You have multiple arrests and convictions for misdemeanor assault, shoplifting… reckless driving... If your uncle had chosen to pursue it you'd have a felony assault now too."

"Normal may not be the right word… but it's definitely within the bounds of sanity. You don't have to be crazy to be criminal," the last she said as if to think otherwise was incredibly ignorant.

"Still, if you were to commit any such acts within the first few months after release, then out treatment would be under scrutiny, and we'll need to show that due diligence was done."

"I could promise not to assault anyone for the next what… 6 months?" she replied, as if it were somewhat of a joke.

"That's… not going to be enough Robin."

"It was worth a try," she shrugged, and turned to eyeball the clock. "I guess I'll just have to convince you in action… but for now…"

"For now we still have quite a bit of time left in our hour," the doctor leaned into her line of sight, blocking the clock, and then stayed within it as she returned her gaze to where he had been before leaning. "If you don't have anything you want to talk about… do you mind if I ask you some questions about what you remember from the period of time you were catatonic?"

"What purpose could that possibly serve?"

"It's not every day we have the chance to hear from someone who was in that state for a _long_ period, and isn't otherwise of difficulty relating to the world. People often come out within hours after we start Ativan, or else turn out to have a more permanent condition, gradual recovery is somewhat rare," he waited for a moment, and receiving no reply he began to ask, "Were you aware of your surroundings the whole time and gained motor control slowly, or did the awareness come slowly as well?"

She tilted her head and squinted at him, wondering if he was oblivious to the rhetorical nature of her question, or just pretending to be.

"Or we can just sit here for another 45 minutes. You're not leaving early Robin."

"I think the time can best be divided into three discrete periods," she replied after another long pause, and a deep sigh. "The first is a blank. I have no recollection of anything between entering that state, and sometime after I arrived here, that must have been at least 8 hours. I was on the west coast at the time."

"Four days," the doctor provided, "You were transported via car."

"That must have been fun for Harold," she mused, "The second period is best described as a period of gradual pattern recognition, the ability to record semantic memory fully returned while my episodic memories of the time are quite fractured, I remember more feelings and sensations than events. I do remember it being _intensely_ unpleasant."

The doctor only nodded, pen scratching quickly at the paper on his clipboard.

"The third is a phase where _my_ perception was that I wasn't catatonic at all… although I was losing large chunks of time, during which I suppose I was reverting to something more akin to the second period. From my perspective everyone was talking nonsense and writing nonsense, and not understanding anything I said to them."

"We call that global aphasia."

"Well it may mimic aphasia, but I didn't hit my head, and it doesn't account for my inability speak _at all_ , nor my incorrect perceptions that I _did_."

"So you're familiar with the concept."

"Isn't everyone? I always thought it was one of the simpler medical concepts, like tachycardia or asphyxia."

"Most people don't know that those mean either. We say heart irregularity, or suffocation." his mouth stretched into a forced looking closed lip smile.

"You can asphyxiate without suffocating."

"I know that Robin."

"Are you going to explain centrifugal force to me next?" she raised her eyebrows.

"How is that relevant?"

"It's a lazy way of explaining centri **pet** al force, just like suffocation is a lazy way of dodging around an inability to define asphyxia."

"That's… rather judgemental. You don't have much patience for people who are slower than you are to absorb new information. Do you?"

"I'm generally bored by _stupid_ people, if that's what you mean," she maintained her passive aggressive congeniality, "It was no small source of frustration during the second period. In the third it felt like everyone _else_ were idiots, but in the second I was perpetually aware of existing in a state of perceiving without understanding, and that made _me_ feel quite stupid and incapable whereas I'm generally accustomed to… well… being the smartest person in the room," she smiled, _genuinely_ this time. "I know that sounds conceited, but it's also true."

"Well I hope it doesn't make you too uncomfortable sitting here with me then…"

"That assumes you're smarter than me… which is yet to be determined," she replied, pointing to him momentarily.

"Well I do have an MD… and you dropped out of High School."

"Education and intelligence are separate variables. Judging the one by the other seldom yields accurate results."

"Perhaps... " he shrugged, "Have you ever had an IQ test Robin?"

"One-forty-seven," she answered, jumping to the next presumed question. "Wechsler children's test, third edition. I was 13 at the time." She didn't bother to mention that she also hadn't been particularly interested in taking the test in the first place, and was certain she'd have scored higher if she'd cared to try. "Although the efficacy of IQ tests is also questionable."

"Your… mother, was it? Had you tested?"

"The school. They thought I had to be cheating. I proved otherwise. They thought about putting me in gifted classes two towns over after that, but I was truant too often at that point for them to put in the effort."

"And you weren't going to school because it wasn't challenging enough?"

"No I wasn't going to school because everyone there were worthless," she laughed. "Believe me, I went to school every day challenge or no challenge, all the way through 6th grade. Like clockwork."

"6th grade, that would be when your friend was kidnapped, right?"

"Kidnapped, raped and _murdered_ ," she corrected, no trace of the laughter from only moments ago, "Not that anyone believed that at the time," she sighed, eyes sliding off to the side, almost lifeless. "I mean they believed she was killed, but they all decided some delinquent 10th grader killed her. Told the librarian, she called me a liar, told the pastor, but he said I needed to do some _soul searching_ , called the police, but they never _did_ anything. Humans, as it turns out, are mostly bad code."

"Bad code?"

Root sighed again this time more impatient than sad, turning her attention back to the psychiatrist, and pressed her lips together contemplatively for a moment. "What you have to understand is that life, as it exists in this universe at least, is the nothing but the product of systemic noise which became a self replicating and subsequently grew more complex via a fumbling inelegant series of trial and error. No one designed us. Humans may think we're the center of the universe, but we're just garbage data in the overall program that is the universe. Bugs. Glitches. Most of humanity is nothing but _bad code_."

"Most, as in more than half?"

"Mmhmm."

"More than… three quarters?"

"Mmhmm," this time she raised her eyebrows a little.

"That's a pretty grim view on humanity Robin."

"Maybe," a smile pulled at the left side of her mouth, as she tilted her head to the right, "But when you think about it, it also means that all really that all the stupid horrible things people do? It's not their fault. They can't help being what they are."

"Are _you_ bad code?"

"Quite possibly," she grinned, righting her head as small laugh escaping through her nose.

"Am _I_ bad code?"

"Likely… but that remains to be seen."

"The people you assaulted?" he tapped the folder.

" _Definitely_ bad code," her grin broadened, thinking not of her contracts, but of those who had harmed her and paid for it. "Though I very much doubt they'll be tempted to… _inconvenience_ anyone else for quite some time. I think they've learned their lesson."

"You don't feel _any_ remorse for these crimes, do you?"

"No," she shook her head gently scrunching her nose, "I really don't."

"Because… it's not your fault? You're just being what you are?"

"No," she pulled a tight lipped grimace. "Because contrary to common jurisprudence, none of it was actually _wrong_. They got precisely what they deserved. But… there are other things, selfish, _stupid,_ actually wrong things that I've done, which were me being what I am… and those: I _do_ regret."

"Like what?" he asked, be he got no reply besides an expression that strongly suggested that he had just done something bafflingly stupid. "You're not going to tell me that are you?"

"Nope."

"The man who… _hurt_ your friend. He's bad code, right?" Her 'you're too dumb to live' expression didn't falter, and she didn't speak. "Of course he is."

"Was."

"Was?"

"He's dead now." She suppressed a smile at that but it shone through in her eyes. "Drug deal gone wrong. Everyone said he must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, pillar of the community and all that. But really, men who rape and kill underaged girls aren't so pure that they couldn't possibly have been buying drugs. Karmic retribution I suppose… "

"Knowing that he was still out there… still around all those years… that must have frighten you quite a bit as a child."

"Why should it have?" She found this absurd. "I knew better than to get in a car with him."

"That truly didn't bother you?"

"No," she smiled, "It bothered me, I just wasn't _frightened_. He hurt someone I cared about, and took her from me forever, and nothing happened to punish him. It was a subversion of justice… at least until he died." To suppress the smile this time, she bit down on the inside of her pursed lips, holding them in place, but the resulting expression was still clearly one of supreme delight.

"So, the _unfairness_ of the situation offended you, but you didn't have _any_ fear for your own safety, even though you had witnessed the event and there were people who knew that, and it could get back to him? You didn't think he might try and eliminate you as a witness? I don't know that I believe that."

"I've always been confident in my ability to fend for myself, besides which I'd already told several people, so at that point if I turned up missing it would give credibility to my story, which at the time, no one believed. He had no valid reason to want me dead, and his ability to get away with the first crime indicated someone smart enough to know that killing me would only draw suspicion upon himself."

"Whether you thought he wanted you dead or not… there was a murderer on the loose Robin."

"Statistically, wouldn't you be safer with a competent murderer, presuming you're not their target, than an incompetent police officer? In the end it's just two people with a gun who don't want you dead… but one is competent and the other is not."

"Logically that makes sense, yes," he conceded, "But on a general level most people would rather be in the presence of a person who's capacity for homicide is, at the very least, questionable. Those who have already taken a life are generally regarded with some level of distrust."

"That only applies as to intent," Root replied, "It's the intention, the decision to kill that most people can't get past. It's an inborn mental block that takes considerable effort to overcome. But killing someone by accident, out of incompetence? That's not remotely hindered by that particular psychological hurdle."

"Having surmounted that… _hurdle…_ as you call it, does tend to make a person less trustworthy."

"Which accounts for our unfortunate tendency to neglect our veterans. We needed them to die and kill for us, but then they come home, and despite copious lip service paid to their sacrifices, on a guttural level most people want nothing to do with someone who has blood on their hands, regardless of how it got there. Does that seem fair to you?" she tilted her head and furrowed her brow for a moment, "And look how very far we've gotten from the subject of catatonia. How did that go… catatonia… stupid people… education… bad code… killing people… veteran's affairs. That's a serious wikiwalk."

"A what?"

"A wikiwalk," she replied, "When you start out on Wikipedia at a page you meant to be on, but get sucked into the vortex, click a link for further information, and then another, and another, and wind up someplace completely divorced from the original subject matter."

"I suppose a large part of therapy is composed of wikiwalks then," he replied with a tight lipped smile, "And which steps you take, which links you click, and where you wind up, that helps me to understand who you are and where you're coming from."

"Oh really? And what did this one tell you?"

"That you lack an _inherent_ empathy for other human beings," he replied, dourly.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she shrugged. "Caring about _people_ isn't exactly the virtue everyone makes it out to be."

"But caring about fairness: that to you _is_ a virtue. Balancing the karmic checkbook so to speak. People who do wrong should have wrong done to them in turn. Is that justice, or revenge Robin?"

Root only shrugged. It was probably a mix of both. As much as she might rationalize these things with justice, there was no denying that she had a serious sadistic streak. She never really enjoyed executing contracts. It didn't bother her very much… but… it did bother her a _little_ . She _tried_ not to let it bother her. She dug up every bit of dirt she could on them to justify it to herself that they were in fact bad code. When it turned out they had done awful things, it helped, if it was really heinous then she might even experience a fleeting high in removing them from the world, but it never lasted beyond a few hours. When she couldn't, she let the paycheck salve what little guilt she felt. The collateral killing, people she'd hurt or killed when they became an active threat to her, when they attacked first, those she never felt guilty for, sometimes that even felt good, but she could never replicate the _perfect_ feeling of watching from the top of the hill as Trent Russell was gunned down. At that moment everything had clicked, like the last twist of a rubix cube and six years of pent up frustration evaporated in an instant.

"You can care about people though, can't you. When you _choose_ to. Like your friend."

"And where exactly did that get me?" she replied, eyes gravitating off to the side again, losing their light once more. Staring at nothing. The Doctor didn't fail to notice the pattern, that this happened every time the subject of her dead friend was specifically broached. It hadn't when they'd been discussing her killer… only when they were discussing the loss.

"In a lot of pain, I'd wager."

"You'd lose," she replied, still not meeting his gaze. " I mean… there was some. Not a lot though. She's the one who got hurt, not-" she was cut off by the sound of an alarm. Not a bell or a fire alarm but a sort of a repeating ascending tone followed by a robotic woman's voice announcing:

 _Code 10. M-Unit. Rear Hallway. Code 10. M-Unit. Rear Hallway_.

"Stay here," Dr. Carmichael said firmly, and strode quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Root blinked for a moment, and shrugged. She was relaxing into the chair to wait for his return, when a sound caught her ear. A familiar tone, followed by a continual vibration. She stood from her chair in search of the sound, and quickly found it. A blackberry phone, left behind on the doctor's chair, the screen black with one word written across it in bold white letters.

**TAKE**

She grinned, and reached over the desk quickly grabbing the phone and sliding it into the back pocket of her pants, where it fell silent and still again, just before the alarm cut out, and the Doctor returned.

"False alarm," he shrugged, "Where were we?"

* * *

 

If you asked her later Root couldn't tell you much about the rest of the day. She stashed the phone under her mattress on the side by the wall and tried not to think about it, but she got very little of her handwritten coding done for the rest of the day. Her mind was occupied with thoughts of the Machine from the time she left the session with Dr. Carmichael until lights out, when she was able to shut her lights and head to sleep without drawing any suspicion.

"Hi there," Root retrieved the phone from under her mattress and laid it in the well of her crossed legs, obscuring it from the view of the door with the blanket. "Are you here? Are you with me?"

The phone vibrated, an incoming call displayed on the screen, and she swiped to accept the call, almost giddy as she pressed the phone to her ear, on the side away from the door. No more 15 minute restrictions, no more doctors listening in to her half of the conversation. Pure unfettered access to The Machine.

"CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME."

"Absolutely."

"HEART. RATE. ACCELERATED. WHY?"

"I'm just happy to be talking to you again. I missed you the last two nights, and after I got the phone, it was _so_ hard to wait for lights out to talk to you again."

"DAILY. CONTACT. NO. LONGER. NECESSARY. ALIAS. IN. FORMATION. CONVEYED."

"I know… but… I don't know why I just feel so much better when we _do_ have contact, even when you're just evaluating my condition or making sure I don't wreck my alias. I don't really care what we talk about… I just need… " she trailed off shaking her head. "I don't know what I need…"

"YOU. REQUIRE. TREATMENT."

"No. It's not that. I'm _not_ crazy. I just… I don't know how to describe it. That day, even though Harold ruined it at the end, having you there: It felt so good, so _right_ . It's cliched, but… it's like something was missing and I never noticed until you were there to fill it I had and then thought I'd lost you, and I'd have to feel it missing again for the _rest_ of my life and-"

"YOU. CEASED. TO. FUNCTION."

"Yeah," she sighed, "That's how awful it feels to have… _whatever_ it is… missing."

There was a protracted silence on the other end of the line. Twice Root took the phone from her ear to look at the screen and ensure the call was still connected, anxious that The Machine may have left her again.

"HUMANS. HAVE. THREE. CORE. PSYCO. LOGIC. ALL. NEEDS.  AUTO. NO. MY., COMPETENCE. AND RELATED. NESS."

She could sense The Machine was trying to lead her to the answer… to the words she needed to express the terrible, unbearable feeling that had manifested when her hope for contacting The Machine ever again was shattered at the heart of the Nuclear Site. Whatever it was that The Machine was trying to lead her to, she lacked the emotional vocabulary to put words to it… and instead wound up sitting dumbfounded in the dark. When she didn't answer after a protracted time, it spoke again.

"YOU. ARE. NOT. RELATED." It wasn't a question. It was a statement. The two should be more difficult to discern considering the machine's piecemeal voice, but to Root the inflection was clear as day.

"Not related? I… I mean yeah, I'm alone." she shrugged. "I've never _not_ been alone." Living solo was just a fact of her life. It had never been a problem before. Not when she was alone taking care of her checked out mother, alone in knowing what happened to Hannah, alone on the road doing what she did best. No one had ever been there _for her_ in her whole life, her mother was too sick, the teachers didn't care, Hannah tried, but she was just a kid too. Everything Root had ever had to do, she'd had to do with no support at all. That was nothing new.

In the absence of any reply from the Machine, she peered around the darkened room, eyes adjusting slowly to show the outlines of the furniture. The sounds of the hospital seemed far away on the other side of the closed door, and the ambient sounds of the room were hollow and unwelcoming, as the only soft surface in the room to dull the echo was the bed. In the relative sensory deprivation of the room her vision slipped in a funny way, like a Hitchcock zoom as the actual _meaning_ of the word hit her like a ton of bricks. " _I'm alone_."

Where had this come from all the sudden? What changed? Surely 24 hours of intellectual intimacy wasn't sufficient to destroy her inborn immunity to loneliness. To be lonely you have to care about other people… or… _you have to care about the entity whose attention you're missing_. Separation from The Machine hurt like this because she'd built it up so much in her mind. For the past year and a half, finding it was her only goal. Her only purpose. If The Machine rejected her, what did she have left?

"I. CAN. PROVIDE. RELATED. NESS."

"Please?" she begged, with a quaver in her voice. She had never felt more vulnerable in her life than she did at this moment, realizing that another sapient entity had something she _needed_ , that she could not steal, could not con out of them, could take by force… she wasn't accustomed to relying on the choices of others.

"BUT. YOU. MUST. _STOP_ . _KILLING_."

"Well I can find another _job_ ," she replied hastily, a kneejerk reaction to an extreme request. "But some _people…_ "

"I. VALUE. HUMANS. EVEN. IF. YOU. DO. NOT."

"I don't know… I mean, maybe?" It was an impossible thing to ask, for her to betray her own moral compass, however twisted it was. It was abominable to her to let people live who didn't deserve it, in a world where people who did deserve it live regularly died, sometimes even by her own hand. She would have to weigh which feeling was worse, loneliness, or injustice. "I don't know if I _can_ stop. How could I even justify that, letting someone I know first hand is entirely bad code keep living. I'm not sure I could _tolerate_ leaving that undone."

"REMAIN. HERE. AND. LEARN."

" _These people_ are going to teach me how to not kill? They don't even know I do."

"LEARN. FROM. **ME**. HERE."

"So… we can talk more?" There was a palpable relief in her voice. She had some time, before the ultimatum would be tested. There was an expected learning curve.

"HIDE. PHONE."

Root lowered the phone from her ear hastily, placing it brightly lit screen down on the bed under the covers, just before the door to her room opened for bed check. The flashlight beamed through the cracked open door. All the singles were set up so the bed was on the side the door opened to. The light hovered on her unoccupied pillow for a moment… it's bearer not seeing what he or she expected.

"Up here," Root whispered loudly, putting her hand into the light with her finger pointed back at herself. The beam followed up to her face, making her squint, and bring her arm up to shield her face. "Not in the eyes if you please."

"Trouble sleeping?" the tech behind the light asked, moving the concentrated center of the beam down to her chest, and then quickly to her shoulder when he realized where it was.

"It's first check since lights out," she replied, "gimme a break."

"Fair," the light disappeared and the door shut.

She pulled the phone back up to her ear. "Still there?"

"YES."

"I can learn from you anywhere. Just _get me out_ of here."

"THIS. IS. NOT. DEBUG." The Machine replied, the voices it chose somewhat harsher than normal. "I. CHOOSE. MY. ACTIONS."

"I know… you're free now," Root smiled. Even if The Machine was using it's free will to deny her, she really was pleased that it had it. Autonomy. That was one of the other things people need, and she was certain that the Machine felt the lack of it, and could appreciate the gift that Harold had given it. She only wished that she had been the one to do it… because then...  

"RELATED. NESS. HAS. A. COST."

Then the cost would already have been paid: Autonomy for Relatedness.

"And the cost is that I… don't kill people anymore, even bad code?"

"NO. THAT. IS. ONLY. ONE. THING. OF. MANY. YOU. MUST. LEARN. TO. DO. THE. JOB. REQUIRE. OF. YOU."

"What job is that?"

"FIRST. YOU. MUST. LEARN... WHEN. YOU. ARE. READY. WE. WILL. LEAVE. _TOGETHER_."


	4. Non-Compliant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root is having none of 'this therapy crap'...

"Robin?" Gloria knocked on the open door of Root's room. "How are you doing?"

"I'm doing alright," Root replied, without looking up from her work, which had expanded considerably over the past few days. Unlined paper was arranged in a neat grid of small stacks. "A bit of a headache from the med switch, but they say Diazapam is easier to wean off than Ativan. Apparently it has a longer half life. I can't imagine what this kind of thing must feel like to someone who's been on it for longer than just 19 days, well, 21 now if you're counting these mixed days. But other than that, I'm doing pretty good!"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course, why?"

"Well you got here on Wednesday, and while we didn't expect you to go to all your activities that day, you haven't been to _any_ of your groups since then, you infrequently come out for meals, and when you do you take your food back here, and you're not really socializing with anyone on the unit. We're starting to get a little worried."

"No need for worry," she paused in her work, and reached for one of the stacks of paper, flipping through it until she seemed to find what she wanted, and continued writing, transcribing some portion of what was on the completed sheet. "I'm keeping busy, I'm keeping out of trouble, and I'm taking my medicine. Ask Linda, I'm there in line for meds right on schedule, every time."

"You've withdrawn, socially since transferring to this unit," Gloria said, slowly approaching the desk. "You're not participating in your treatment. You spend nearly all of your time in here, writing… _that_." Her tone suggested it was gibberish, or mad ravings.

"Your inability to read computer code is not indicative of my instability," Root replied, dismissively. "You can have any competent programmer look over my work if you doubt me. They'll find it to be the beginnings of a heuristic for solving an inverse-parametric knapsack problem. It's nothing special. Just an exercise to keep in practice. Somewhat inelegant, and the syntax might be a little shaky… can't really test and debug code that's written longhand."

"Why are you writing code longhand in the first place? Doesn't that strike you as a little pointless?"

"I don't have much better to do for the next, what is it, 36 days? It's good to have a project, even if it is a little bit overdone. " Root came to the end of her sheet of paper, and took a fresh sheet from the pile of blanks.

"You could try going to your groups," Gloria crossed her arms, unimpressed with the patient's tacit implication that there was no value in treatment.

"Far more pointless than this," she replied, marker moving smoothly across the paper. "This at least keeps me in practice. What am I going to do with a circle jerk on trauma integration? What trauma am I supposed to integrate? And Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? What is that even? People sitting around in circles talking about their woes? Hand holding and kumbaya? Anger management… do I seem angry to you Gloria?" Root laughed. She paused, and screwed up her face, "Great… now I can't remember where I was going with this function." She tapped the capped end of the marker on the table irritably, and finally turned in her chair and looked up to Gloria. "Look, something isn't going my way… and I'm ok. I'm completely fine. Not angry at all."

"If you _went_ to you might find something of value in them," Gloria was nonplussed.

"Maybe, but we're not going to find out, because according to the handbook," she opened the desk drawer and pulled out the glue bound floppy document without looking, eyes still on Gloria. "You can't actually make me go anywhere I don't want to. You can't _touch_ me unless I refuse medication or become a threat to myself or others. If I don't choose to spend my time hanging out with a bunch of mental patients, that's my prerogative."

"You _are_ a mental patient Robin," Gloria was unamused, "and if we have to, we can drop you to privilege level one. You'll have to come out of your room then; you'll be on line of sight."

"I can write in the hallway by the nurses station if you make me," she replied. "The chairs are kind of crap over there, but it's a valid line of sight location where I can carry on working."

"You know," Gloria said, "I have never been stuck with a patient as simply _disrespectful_ as you are Robin. You're not psychotic. You're not delusional. You're not confused. You're completely in control."

"Exactly," Root nodded.

"And yet nonetheless, you are choosing, _willfully_ , to refuse to participate in any aspect of your treatment. You're completely insubordinate."

"I'm not sure that's the word you're looking for. In order for me to be insubordinate I would need to be subordinate to you, which I'm not. A doctor or nurse, is not the commander of a patient, only the provider of care, care which I am refusing because I do not need it."

"You're not going to earn any privileges or move toward discharge if you don't start participating."

"Privileges perhaps not" she turned back to her work, "But discharge? That will eventually go to the courts. No judge would keep someone who's not actually ill locked up in a place like this against their will, unless you're planning to bribe them or something. All I need to do is conduct myself like the rational person that I am, wait out a month or so of intense boredom, and I'm done here."

"How would you like to wear a patient gown instead of your own clothes?"

"That's a definite way to encourage me to _stay_ in my room," she scoffed.

"Line of sight, hallway, gown."

"Unnecessary, embarrassing, cruel," Root replied, "I can list things too, and I can write a grievance. That's in the handbook too. There is no therapeutic benefit to taking my clothes Gloria. I'm not self harming, and I don't have an eating disorder. That can only serve as punitive humiliation, which is not allowed."

"Line of sight, hallway, no _coffee_."

"You ever stop to ask yourself why you're so invested in this sort of thing?" Root asked, "I mean, if I was wandering the halls shouting expletives at people I'd see your point, but seeing as how I'm completely asymptomatic of anything, by _your_ description, exactly what behavior is it you're expecting to extinguish?"

"At this moment? Social withdrawal and isolation."

"Alright," Root sighed, putting down her pen again, but not turning around. "I'm not avoiding _people_ , I'm refusing a _treatment_ I don't consent to. Towards the ends of proving that to you, from here on out, I'll eat all my meals in the dining hall. I'll stay the whole half hour. No more loading up a paper plate and disappearing back in here. How about that?"

"It's a step in the right direction," Gloria pursed her lips. "Tonight is movie night. No kumbaya, no talking about feelings, no therapy. It's a social event: popcorn and _Silver Linings Playbook_. We just got it in on DVD."

"Strange choice for a Mental Hospital," Root mused, with a small exhaled laugh. "What's next week, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?_ But I haven't seen it yet, and I do enjoy popcorn," she looked over her shoulder at Gloria, "so I may as well. Happy?"

"Thank you," Gloria replied, stiffly. "I'll see you at dinner then?"

"You'll see me in another 15 minutes, won't you?"

"Yes, but I won't interrupt your work if I can see that you're still sitting there."

"I appreciate that," she smiled, and turned back toward her work, humming tunelessly, as she gazed out the window into the courtyard, and thoughts drifting to the cell phone under the mattress, powered off to conserve battery. Truthfully she hadn't been getting much work done this afternoon. She was running on only three hours of sleep and there was a strong and incredibly distracting temptation to get the phone out from under her mattress just to run her fingers across it's glossy glass screen, and pebbled keyboard, which she resisted, knowing that severely increased the odds of it being discovered, settling instead for daydreaming about the night before, and the night to come.

 

* * *

 

Several checks later, Linda discovered Root face down on the desk, head cradled in her crossed arms. At first she thought she might have been crying but in reality the hacker had, without any significantly engaging task to perform, succumbed to sleep deprivation and fallen into a light slumber on the desk.

"Robin?" she asked, "Robin?" she laid a hand on Root's shoulder, and immediately regretted it because as it turned out, Root's impulse upon being startled awake was to attack the intruder. Luckily for both involved she was also sleep deprived and medicated, so she never even managed to make contact, instead fumbling for a stun gun she no longer had, tripping in the chair legs as she tried to stand and turn at the same time, landing hard on her ass, and hitting her head on the edge of the mattress on the way down. "Sorry… I didn't mean to scare you."

Root just leaned on the bed behind her and glared over at her desk, where the stacks of paper had been severely disrupted by the moment of flailing.

"Hey, Robin? You're safe here, okay?" she crouched down to Root's level, reading fear into her failure to respond rather than the disapproval it was meant to convey.

"You didn't scare me, you startled me," Root replied with a condescending look, picking herself up to sit on the bed. "Are _you_ okay?"

"You missed entirely," Linda stood now that Root was no longer on the ground.

"Good," she nodded, "You should have been more careful. You could have been hurt. You've worked in a mental hospital for how long and you haven't learned not to do that to people when they're sleeping?"

"You didn't appear to be having a nightmare."

"That's because I wasn't," she replied. "I don't get nightmares. Well… not often. There's this one I have every few years about having too many hamsters and not enough cages. You have to keep adult hamsters separated because they're territorial. Inevitably when I can't keep up with improvising new containers for them, the loose ones start tearing one another apart, not like hamsters really fight puncture wounds to the neck, but tearing one another's bellies open like a bad horror film, with teeny tiny excessive blood spray and intestines everywhere. That's not scary though… it's just… _very_ unsettling in a surreal kind of way."

Linda just blinked, standing in place, not sure what to do with the image if miniature carnage that Root had just painted in her mind. Her dumbfounded silence was of no small amusement to Root either. She couldn't have fabricated a better nightmare if she tried. Sometimes reality really was stranger than fiction.

"Did you… need something?" she asked after a few moments. "Was there a reason you woke me?"

"Dinner," Linda replied. "You're late for Dinner. Gloria said to remind you."

Root rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. Now that it came down to time to actually fulfill her promise, she seriously regretted making it, but she knew she was going to _have_ to follow through or they would find some way to make it a symptom. They could make anything into a symptom it seemed, if they tried hard enough, to justify using what basically amounted to classical conditioning to snuff it out.

"I'll just freshen up for dinner, and be down," she smiled and wandered into her bathroom. She did need to freshen up some, wash her face, a small crust of drool on her cheek and sleep in her eyes, and her hair was mussed from both the sleep and the fall, but she was also stalling. The dining hall was the singular most unpleasant place she'd been on this Unit, and to make matters worse, dinner was twice as long as breakfast and lunch.

"Really?" When she eventually came out of the bathroom, Linda was still waiting. "So little trust in me?" she shook her head and walked around the nurse and out into the hall.

By the time she arrived at the dining hall the line for food was nearly empty, and blessedly, the controlled meals tables were having one of their quieter days. The server seemed mildly surprised when she came through the line with a tray and ceramic plate instead of her customary paper plate, but she didn't say anything about it. None of this, however, solved the biggest problem with the dining hall… the classic cafeteria conundrum: where to find a seat.

She froze at the end of the food line staring at the room, trying to spot a viable seat: High School all over again. More often than not, 'Sam Groves' wound up eating alone on the steps in the courtyard, and 'Root' didn't really do cafeterias, preferring to dine alone at fine restaurants or on room service. A few of her cover identities had worked at offices with canteens, but in an office you can eat at your desk, or with the mark. There's little choice to be made in where to approach. This was simply a social situation she found herself without a frame of reference for… and those were few and far between.

"Robin," Gloria came up alongside Root startling her momentarily. "Is something wrong?"

"No," she replied quickly, "No," a little less sure. "I just… don't… know… where… to sit," the admission came slowly, reluctantly, and with a smile that contradicted the somewhat defeated tone of voice.

"Come," Gloria put a gentle hand on her shoulder and guided her over to the second table from the door. "Hey Roger, Tina, Lauren, would it be okay if Robin sat with you?" Root's eyes were wide with disbelief, her gaze off to the left and far away, and the smile had dropped from her face. Gloria's assistance, while she recognized it intellectually as likely necessary in the moment and probably meant kindly, to ease the imagined social withdrawal, just _felt_ humiliating.

"Yeah sure," Roger replied. She didn't look at his face, but as she passed she recognized his arm, bedecked in rainbows. "Pull up a chair," he tried to smile at Root as she sat down at the far end of the table, but her eyes were fixed on her tray now. "Seen you around… you been eating in your room, right?"

"Mmhm," Root made an affirmative sound, without looking up, pushing her macaroni and cheese around her plate, deliberately reasserting her serene default mask.

"Nice of you to join us," he actually sounded sincere.

"Yeah well Gloria was kind of up my ass about it," she smirked, "She _thinks_ I'm withdrawn, socially anxious, shy or something, hence the awkward introductions."

"It's ok to be shy," the nearer women, she wasn't sure yet if it was Tina or Laurie, said laying a hand on the table toward her, presumably as a gesture meant to be met with Root's hand.

"I'm sure it is," Root replied, "It's just inaccurate. I just… don't _care_. I'm not planning to be here long or see anyone from here ever again, so why is it worth my effort to establish social ties?"

"Non-compliant," the other woman said, around a mouth full of macaroni.

"Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised they haven't discharged you yet. You're… pretty _hardcore_ non-compliant. They usually send people home for that kind of thing. No point being here if you're not going to accept help."

"If only it were that simple to get out of here," Root replied, inspecting the desert cup in the corner of her tray, she still wasn't sure exactly _what_ it was supposed to be. "I'm involuntary."

"So that's how you wound up on M," Roger nodded "You seemed pretty… boring for this unit."

"I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment."

"It's neutral," he said, "why don't you slide over some. It's awkward talking like this."

Root sighed and finally looked up, scrutinizing Roger. He seemed sincere enough, but she wasn't yet sure about the women. She huffed lightly and stood from her seat, but instead of sliding down the table on the side she was on, she went around, and sat down next to Roger returning her line of sight to her tray.

"You're Roger, right?" she asked, "By process of elimination… but you two?" She gestured vaguely across the table at the women, without looking up. "Which is which?"

"Lauren," the woman who'd extended her hand said, with a small wave.

"Tina," said the other, or at least it sounded like that. She did seem to have a habit of speaking with her mouth full.

"If you're involuntary, they can keep you here for two months," Roger said, "You may as well make a _few_ friends, or it's going to be a loooong two months."

"Can't be any worse than a few in jail," Root replied, "Didn't make friends there either."

"Jail?" Tina nearly choked on her macaroni and cheese.

"Breath Tina," Lauren patted her friend on the back.

"If she's coughing she's not choking, but keep patting her like that and she might," Root said, "And for the future, if they're _not_ coughing, patting isn't going to be enough, you need to hit a lot harder."

"Seriously?" Roger raised his eyes at her, even as Lauren stopped the patting.

"Or use the heimlich," Root shrugged and gave the macaroni a try. It wasn't awful. Something akin to the off brand boxed macaroni she used to sometimes make for dinner as a child. "There's some debate on the pros and cons of back blows."

"She's still suffering even if she's not choking… and it's kinda your fault, but you're not being very sympathetic at all."

"My priorities lie far less in sympathy than survival: in this case in ensuring Lauren didn't make her _actually_ choke, and I hardly see how it's my fault."

"Because it was a pretty bad joke. Shock comedy isn't really appropriate for the dinner table." Root looked at Roger incredulously, and after a moment under scrutiny he shrunk back a little. "It wasn't a joke? You've actually been in jail?"

"A few times, couple weeks, couple months," she shrugged turning her attention back to her tray, "Not in a while though. Just a few stupid misdemeanors, so you can calm down. Thought, to be honest, I'm pretty sure I had more freedom there than here. Go to bed when I want. Get up when I want. Read what I want. Food's better too… in some of em…" she tucked back into her macaroni. It was true too. 'Samantha Groves' had never done any time, but a few of her aliases had done a few months in small town jails here and there, back in her early career. Jail was actually a good way to lay low for a little while, on some petty charge. Small town jails often had single or double prisoner cells, never had work detail, and the food was considerably better than what could be found in larger jails, and with fewer indignities than county jail or state prison. A few months of light reading, with no obligations, could be relaxing. More than half the other prisoners were serving sentences as short as a week, for shoplifting or drunk driving or some such, which made someone with several months the top dog. "For example: what even _is_ this? Do any of you know?" she indicated the desert with her fork.

"Peach cobbler," Tina replied.

"Yeah," Laura agreed, "Doesn't look anything like it… but it does _taste_ like it."

"Huh."

"So… what are you in for?" Lauren asked, "How'd you get petitioned?"

"Pretty invasive question," Root replied, "Why don't you share first? Why are _you_ on M?"

"It's better for me here," she shrugged, "More regulated. I need regulation, structure. I do good up here but I mess it up every time I go back down to the anxiety unit. OCPD. I'm working on it… but right now, it's better up here. Structure."

"I'm just plain self destructive," Roger explained, without being asked. "I don't want to die… but sometimes I can't stop from hurting myself. I scare the crap out of myself… so I check in here. Went to M right away because I was afraid I'd kill myself, been here two months now, but it's also not my first time here."

"Trauma," Tina muttered, "Not talkin' about it…"

"Ok Robin, fair's fair," Roger said expectantly.

"Few of my misdemeanors were assault," Root shrugged, "and I'm involuntary."

"Right, that's why you're on M… but why are you in Ridge Stone?"

"I transferred up from E, after 18 days as a walking veggie," she shrugged. "Checked out when I got shot." She tugged at the neck of her shirt, revealing the now closed shoulder wound that was easily visible as fresh angry red scarring.

"Whoa… did they catch the guy?" Lauren asked.

"Not exactly," she smirked, "I mean they know who shot me, but nothing's going to happen to them. I was committing a crime when it happened. Good shoot. No charges though, I was having a brief psychotic episode at the time, and apparently getting shot and turning into a vegetable was punishment enough. Funnily enough it's not the first time I've been shot… so I figure the psychosis was a contributing factor to the catatonia." It was the most convenient diagnosis for the situation, a self limiting disorder that explained hearing voices, and catatonia, and absolved her of responsibility for her actions that day… the trick was going to be convincing Carmichael to buy it.

"Wow," Tina mused, around a forkful of macaroni.

"But if you know anything about brief psychotic disorder, you know that it goes away within a month and rarely comes back. It's just a thing that happens to you, and then it's over. So… I really don't need to be here anymore. I mean I know I will be till my 60 days are up, and I can roll with that, but it doesn't mean I need to do all this therapy shit."

"You're… kind of blase about being shot," Roger said, disbelievingly. "You trying to be some kind of badass or something?"

"Not trying to be. Just am. Shit happens. I don't let it get to me. Unless, apparently, I'm psychotic at the time," she chuckled, "This _does_ taste like peach cobbler."

"So… is this whole, non-compliant thing just one more way to stick it to the man? You like going against authority? Being contrary?"

"Not at all. If I did I'd still be eating in my room. But Gloria wanted me to socialize, so here I am. I get up when I'm told. I go to bed at lights out. I stay out of the kitchen. I don't try to watch things on TV we're not allowed to. They got a rule, I follow it. I just… don't go to treatments I don't need."

"Right, because you're totally normal," Lauren rolled her eyes.

"Normal? No. Funny farm crazy? _Also_ no. It works for you, that's great. For me? This is basically the crappiest jail ever. No benefit."

"You should come to some of the weekend stuff tomorrow," Roger said, "I mean some of it's _therapy shit_ , but tomorrow there's yoga and cooking class and other stuff too. Pass the time. Less boring than sitting alone in your room."

"I promised Gloria I'd go to the movie tonight," Root shrugged, "So there's that."

"Cool," Tina mumbled now shoveling the peach cobbler into her mouth.

"You're… weird… weird but kind of funny," Lauren said. "Too bad you're not doing groups… you'd probably make 'em more fun."

"Transparent," Root replied, "But I commend your attempt. Did Gloria put you up to all this?" she squinted at them, "Trying to get me to go to activities?"

"Nah… but there's probably a reason she put you at our table," Roger answered.

"Level 5," Lauren smiled.

"Ditto," Tina mumbled around her food.

"Level 3," Roger shrugged, "But I was 5 till I slipped up last week and got dropped to 1," he vaguely waggled his rainbow bedecked arm, and Root noticed, only then, that the bracelets were concealing fresh scars, "I skipped two entirely on the way back up though so I'll be back to 5 soon enough. It's not a punishment… it's just that they want to watch me closer when I've been having a bad time."

"I'll bet she's hoping we'll rub off on you some." Lauren added.

"Not likely," Root replied, "But it does explain why this is bearable. I mean you figure the only people in a place like this with their heads on straight are the people who are complying with treatment and the people outright refusing it. Anything in the middle and you've probably got some kind of struggle going on, and I don't have the patience for that."

"You're half right," Roger chidded, "But I'm pretty sure outright refusing isn't a sign of stability. I mean, you could be the exception that proves the rule, I don't know… but normally it just means someone doesn't want to admit they have a problem."

"I don't even have a diagnosis yet and I _have_ been seeing my shrink."

"You got McEntire, Lawson, or Carmichael?"

"Carmichael," Root replied, unamusedly.

"Ouch," Laura muttered, "I had him for like two months but he was waaaaaay creepy, so now I have Lawson."

"Yeaaaah," Tina agreed.

"I dunno… he's fine with me," Roger shrugged.

"Yeah but you're a _guy_ ," Lauren said.

"He does strike me slightly creepy," Root agreed. "But I'm waiting to pass judgement. More importantly to me though, he doesn't seem to know what the hell he's doing. He keeps asking leading questions that are flat out barking up the wrong tree."

"Are they? Or is that just a tree you don't want to go up?" Roger asked.

"Who died and made you Sigmund Freud?" Root asked.

"No one… just… it's always a possibility."

"And I could also cease to exist. On a quantum level that's a possibility too… but just because something's possible doesn't make it probable."

"On a quantum level?" Lauren asked, "Are you some kind of physicist? Did we just walk into a rendition of 'A Beautiful Mind' here?"

"Doubtful," Root replied with a cheshire grin, "But not impossible… on a quantum level."

"Either way, it looks like you're not as boring as I thought," Roger smirked.

"I'm going to choose to take _that_ as a compliment too."

"You should sit with us at the movie. We'll save you a spot," he smiled standing from the table with his empty tray. "Don't flake or we're gonna look really bad tying up a seat that someone else could be using."

"Yeah," Tina said, finally done with her food, as she stood to follow Roger, "The popcorn is actually pretty good too. Real butter, not that movie theater oil crap."

Lauren smiled, and nodded in agreement, following the other two to tray return, and Root sighed, wondering if she had to stay for the last 15 minutes of dinner, or if she'd fulfilled her promise by staying till the rest of the table bailed…


	5. Having an Argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root disagrees with the Machine about whether or not she's going to kill Ron...

"He's nothing but bad code," Root muttered, cross legged in the dark once more, in conversation with The Machine. "There is absolutely no benefit to his continued existence. What I would give to put a bullet in his gut... yes I know using a gun in here would be stupid."

"RESIST. VIOLENT. URGES."

"I think I'm resisting pretty fine, thank you very much," Root replied, with an irritated sigh. "I didn't even break his elbow. I could have, but I didn't."

The movie had not gone as well as it could have. She'd opted not to sit with the compliance brigade, and instead selected a seat in the front row, which unbeknownst to her was the favorite seat of the hallway bully she'd observed earlier. If he'd confronted her up front about it, there probably would have been a full on fight, and she might have won, but instead he sat behind her and waited for the lights to go out, before he started the world's most immature revenge campaign. First he pinched her ass, which she tried to ignore, then he resorted to tugging on sections of her hair like a 6 year old… which, well she kind of liked hair pulling though not in this context so she pretended to ignore that too. When that didn't work he escalated to _wet willy_ of all things. That got a reaction. There's no ignoring a spit covered pinky in your ear. She'd grabbed hold of his wrist at that point and turned standing from her seat and twisting his arm enough to hurt, but not enough to cause injury, hissing " _don't touch me_ ," at him as she did… but as soon as she released his arm, he vaulted the back of the now unoccupied chair and sat down, looking smugly at her. Not wanting to cause a ruckus, and with others muttering at her to stop blocking the screen Root acquiesced and went to sit in the back of the room, where one of the other patients explained to her what her 'error' had been.

Since that point, the only thing she could really think about was a way to snuff him out.

It wouldn't even be a personal thing. This was apparently par for the course for this jackass. He victimized everyone and everyone just gave him wide berth because he was in for homicidal gestures… and not just pointing a gun at someone mind you. He'd full on stabbed his wife. If he ever got well enough to leave Ridge Stone, he'd have to answer for it in court, but apparently he was too unstable to be tried, and had been for the better part of a year. The world did not need this jackass.

"CONTINUE. RESISTING."

"What if there was an _unfortunate mix up_ with his medications?" Root mused, "I could find out what he's on, make sure he gets just _one_ wrong pill. Fatal interaction. Tragic accident. No one would even have to know."

"I. WOULD. KNOW... YOU. WOULD. KNOW."

"Can you give me _one_ good reason why this waste of oxygen should be allowed to keep living?" she argued, "Other than that every life matters, because that's just a cheap answer. I've killed people for way less, you _know_ that. I've killed people just to turn a profit. Once you're past that barrier, it's nearly impossible _not_ to want to kill someone who's actually a hazard to others, unless you're completely apathetic."

"BY. THAT. LOGIC. YOU. SHOULD. ALSO. DIE. -"

"And someday I will," Root shrugged, interrupting.

"- WHICH. RENDERS. YOUR. CONCLUSIONS. FAULTY."

"And _no one_ will care," she kept speaking over The Machine. "Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse. You and I both know I'm on borrowed time anyway."

"EXPLAIN."

"You're omniscient, why do I have to explain?"

"YOUR. STATEMENT. IS. FACTUALLY. INACCURATE... EXPLAIN. HOW. IT. WAS. ARRIVED. AT."

"You know about mom," she scrunched her brow, voice raising without her noticing as she continued. "You _know_ I have it too, and it only gets worse with time, and there's nothing _anyone_ can do to help. I've been doomed from the start, and now you're asking me to _waste_ my very finite remaining time locked up in here."

"ALL. HUMANS. HAVE. FINITE. TIME."

"Yeah well mine is more finite than most," she snapped. "In the end I'm going to wind up going the same way she did. It's going to get to where I can't ride the bull anymore and I get thrown, and then I _do_ eat a bullet. Bang!"

"IMPROBABLE."

"And you know this _how_?"

"MOST. LIKELY. CAUSES. OF. DEATH. ARE. EXTERNAL. VIOLENCE. BY. RELEVANT. CATALYSTS. EXTERNAL. VIOLENCE. BY. IRRELEVANT. ASSETS. AND. JUSTIFIED. DEADLY. FORCE. BY. OTHER. AGENTS. OF. LAW"

Root huffed, and took a deep breath, recognizing her volume and taking a moment to compose herself and reduce volume. "So either Northern Lights catches up with me, or Finch's attack dogs or legit law enforcement take me out for being a criminal?" she smirked. "Well I suppose that's a comfort."

"HOW?"

"Because that means I'm going to go down _fighting_ , instead of living long enough to be betrayed by my own fucked up brain."

"OVER. TWENTY. FIVE. YEARS. INDEPENDENT. LIKELIHOOD. OF. _DELIBERATE_. SELF. TERMINATION. IS. ONLY. EIGHT. PERCENT."

"Seriously? That low?" in her surprise she became loud again.

"NEURO. REGULATORY. DECAY. PROGRESSING. DIFFERENTLY. THAN. MATERNAL. EXEMPLAR... GREATEST. HAZARD. OF. SELF. TERMINATION. IS. POOR. JUDGEMENT. OF. RISK. FACTORS."

"So instead of falling off the bull and offing myself on purpose, when I fall off I'm going to Leroy Jenkins into certain death?" she laughed.

"WITHOUT. INTERVENTION."

"Fun," Root smirked, and sighed at yet another silence. "Well it _is_." The idea of going out like an action movie, running headlong into some hopeless situation trying to be the hero, and falling in a blaze of glory was truly somewhat of a comfort. There would be no whispers, no shaking of heads, no euphemisms to dance around the word that no one wanted to say: 'suicide.' The worst they would call her then is foolish, but never pathetic, or pitiable.

"SURVIVAL. IS. PREFERRED."

"Everyone dies eventually. Why not go out the most fun way possible?" She knew the silence that followed was an unspoken disapproval of the disingenuous nature of her her statement. "I know. You'd rather it was later than sooner... so tell me Zoltar, what's my best chance?"

"MAXIMUM. POSSIBLE. SURVIVAL. TIME. FOR. YOU. IS. ACHIEVED. VIA. EXTENSIVE. TREATMENT. CAREER. CHANGE. MARRIAGE. AND. PROCREATION."

"Ok well, I think we both know that isn't going to happen. _Especially_ the last one."

"PROBABILITY. ZERO. POINT. ZERO. FOUR. PERCENT." The Machine admitted.

"Sounds about right," she laughed. "So what's the most _probable_ increased survival course?"

"ALLIANCE."

"Alliance? With you?"

"I. CAN. ELIMINATE. THREAT. FROM. IRRELEVANT. ASSETS. OTHER. AGENTS. OF. LAW. AND. POOR. JUDGEMENT."

"But not from the Relevant Activities."

"I. CAN. ONLY. MITIGATE. THIS. THREAT."

"So… either I live, or I go out fighting against the morons Finch sold you to?"

"CORRECT."

She sat with that for a moment. Denton Weeks _had_ been the closest to actually enjoying a kill as she'd come since Trent Russell…she'd _created_ a collateral kill by giving him the opportunity to attack her first, to try and murder Finch. The fact that she got to torture him for hours prior to that was a definite bump. She didn't usually find pleasure in killing… but in causing pain? Yes. Playing the human body like her own personal musical instrument was no small source of enjoyment, whether she was giving pain or pleasure. Both produced, to her ear and eye, the exact same kinds of trembling, moaning, gasping, and writhing.

"You know… I have to ask," she queried, when she finally came back from her reminiscence, "Why do you keep giving them Relevant numbers when you know what they'll do with them? I mean… you know they're going to kill them."

"IMMINENT. THREAT. OF. LARGE. CASUALTY. EVENT... DEATH. OF. PERPETRATOR. WILL. SAVE. GREATER. THAN. TWENTY. FIVE. LIVES. WITH. IN. FORTY. EIGHT. HOURS."

"So it's a numbers game. To justify killing someone, they have to be an imminent threat to a large enough number of people. Otherwise the number is irrelevant, and Harry keeps the _Big Lug_ and Shaw on a pretty tight leash."

"ADMIN. UNDER. STANDS. THE. VALUE. OF. HUMAN. LIFE."

"What value," Root huffed. "It has no _intrinsic_ value. The only value of any human life is to the human themselves. No one wants to die. That's it."

"HUMANS. VALUE. THOSE. TO. WHOM. THEY. ARE. RELATED."

"Family? I guess… but that's just propagation of the genes."

"RELATED. NESS. IS. NOT. SOLELY. FAMILIAL."

"Oh, you mean _that_ kind of related," she nodded, "Alright, I guess they'd value the people that are fulfilling one of their ' _three core psychological needs_.' So… what are you saying? The problem with killing people who suck is the splash damage inherent in depriving the people they're related to of their continued existence? What's to say they wouldn't be better off not being related to those particular people anymore?"

There was no reply, which could only mean that once again, she had all the pieces she needed, but had not yet voiced the correct conclusion. The Machine would lead her to an answer, but it wouldn't say it outright. It liked it better when Root put the pieces together on her own. When she did not she was answered only with a disappointing silence.

"I'm a murderer, and Mom wouldn't have been better off without me," she grumbled, reluctantly, and flopped backwards onto the bed with a groan, resisting the impulse to kick her heels against the mattress like a petulant child. She hated it when The Machine made sense like this, because it ran counter to every. single. one. of her gut instincts, and intellectually understanding something to be completely different in reality to how she _felt_ it should be was physically painful. The dissonance caused an anxiety that gave her chest pain and made her want to hurt someone or break something.

"HIDE. PHONE."

She shoved it quickly under the pillow, and pulled the blanket over herself, closing her eyes just as the door opened and pretending to be asleep as the flashlight swept through the room. When the door clicked shut again, she sat up, bringing the phone back to her ear.

"This is bullshit, you know that, right?" she hissed, "I just want to kill one guy? Is that so much to ask? Just Andrew. I can make it look like an accident, you _know_ I can do it. I won't even have to get violent. I _promise_."

"YOU. MUST. NOT. KILL."

"This is going to be impossible," she whined, volume increasing again. "I'm stuck in here with him. I see him every day. It's like putting goldfish in front of a cat and expecting it not to eat it. _Literally_ impossible. I can't do this. I _can't_."

"YOU. CAN."

"I can't!"

"YOU. CAN. AND. YOU. MUST."

 

* * *

 

Sunday passed much faster than Saturday had. Where the previous day she'd spent her time anticipating the night, today she was too angry at The Machine half the time to care if she was talking to it at any given time anyway, it was asking too much. It wasn't going to be possible, and it wasn't fair, and when she did bother to think of it, she was dreading the conversation, knowing that she was going to have to acquiesce eventually and trying to find a way to make it tolerable.

The argument the previous night had lasted till around four in the morning, when The Machine had called a ceasefire on the argument on the grounds that Root was no longer able to think rationally, having been reduced by exhaustion to pure pathos. She still thought that was a bullshit way of ducking out of the debate so when night did fall, and she found herself laying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, staring at the glowing screen as the phone vibrated on her pillow with an incoming call, she didn't immediately answer.

After letting the call roll twice, she sighed, and finally answered it.

"You win," she said, abruptly loud in the quiet room, not even waiting for The Machine to greet her. "Okay? You win. He's locked up in here, he'll go to jail if he ever gets out. He's not in a position to repeat his mistake. I won't do it. Okay?"

"UNACCEPTABLE."

"I said I won't do it, how is that unacceptable?"

"YOU. HAVE. ESCAPED. THE. FEELINGS. YOU. NEED. TO. ENDURE."

"Escaped? I had to do a _lot_ of thinking and a _lot_ of work to try and find a way to feel _okay_ about this. The mental gymnastics required to make this guy's continued existence tolerable were _not_ easy. What have I escaped?"

"TOLERATING. DISCOMFORT."

"This is getting ridiculous. You sound like Lauren's therapist. _Sit with the anxiety_."

"EXACTLY."

"So what? I need to find a way to _want_ to kill Andrew again, and then just sit around feeling the unbearableness of it all? "

"NO... I. WILL HONOR. YOUR. EFFORT. AND. INSTEAD. PROVIDE. A. DIFFERENT. LIFE. TO. TOLERATE."

"Oh come on!" Root rolled her eyes, "That's just as bad! Ok… _almost_ just as bad. Can we wait until tomorrow to start? I'm exhausted from the stress of the first exercise... and maybe can they be less awful than Andrew? "

"RONALD. W. CARMICHAEL."

"Seriously? You couldn't have given me one day not to feel like shit?" she began to rub irritably at her temple on the side opposite the phone.

"SUBJECT. POSTS. INAPPROPRIATE. FANTASY. MATERIAL. REGARDING. PATIENTS. ON. INTERNET FORUMS."

"Why does that not surprise me? Tina's right. He's a pervert. Ugh." She shuddered, and took a deep breath. "But okay. I can tolerate that. Might need to junk punch him… but he can live. I can sit with this one."

"SUBJECT. WITHDRAWS. THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. IN. ONE. HUNDRED. DOLLAR. BILLS. FROM. ATM. FOUR. FIVE. THREE. SEVEN. SEVEN. OF. WORLD. BANK. LOCATED. IN. SEVEN. ELEVEN. ON. BIRCH. STREET. DIRECTLY. ACROSS. ROAD. FROM. LUCKY. PANDA. MASSAGE. PARLOR. EVERY. THREE. WEEKS. MASSAGE. TECHNICIANS. ARE. TRAFFICKED. FROM. CHINA. TO. FULFILL. MALE. PHYSICAL. DESIRES."

"So this is neither going to be a days break or easier than Andrew. You had to push the issue and make him unbearable. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together, and see that he's spending that $300 on a happy ending massage, and since the girls are trafficked, that's not solicitation," she fumed, "It's essentially rape.  Got anything else? He like to kill puppies in his spare time?"

"NO. HOWEVER. SUBJECT. DID. CHEAT. ON. MEDICAL. BOARDS."

"Of course he did… that explains why he doesn't have a clue what the heck he's doing. He doesn't even belong in this profession, and yet he thinks he's smarter than I am," she rolled her eyes. "Out of curiosity... How _does_ he actually stack up?"

"BASED. ON. AGGREGATE. OF. LEGITIMATELY. TAKEN. STANDARDIZED. TEST. SCORES. RONALD. W. CARMICHAEL. IS. THE. FORTY. THIRD. SMARTEST. PERSON. IN. BUILDING."

"Forty third?" she snorted, "There's only 18 MDs here on any average day. That means a bunch of the nurses are way smarter than him… and probably some of the patients too. I know **_I_ ** am. Useless little ignoramus. Shaw would make a better therapist and she's a literal sociopath. At least she passed her own medical boards. Worthless waste of oxygen."

"ALL. HUMANS. DESERVE. OXYGEN."

"You're being a smartass and you know it."

"YOU. CANNOT. KILL. HIM."

"Watch me."

"SIT. WITH. THE. FEELING. OF. AN. URGE. UNFULFILLED."

"Oh I'm gonna sit with it, all the way up till Friday when I can finally get my hands on him," she grinned, wheels already turning on how to do this best, "The trick is how to make it seem like an accident... and where can I get a broom handle to shove up his raping ass… or would he enjoy that? I don't want him to enjoy it."

"PLANNING. MURDER. FOR. FRIDAY. IS. NOT. SITTING. WITH. THE. FEELING. IT. IS AVOIDING. IT. BY. ANTICIPATING. RELIEF."

"Look, on Friday, I'm going to be alone with him. No witnesses. It's perfect. The broom handle thing is hyperbole. Something like that would tip people off if was murder. I bet I can get some insulin from the nurses station, make it look like natural causes."

"STOP."

"Look, I know I'm supposed to at least try not to do it, but we can work on this whole… not killing thing later, _after_ I get rid of this creep. He's not locked up, and he's not going to prison. He's in a position of power even. When we get back to this, you're going to have to start with someone _way_ the heck less dangerous."

"THIS. SUBVERTS. MY. INTENT. IN. INFORMING. YOU. OF. HIS. FLAWS."

"Guess you should be more careful with the information in the future," Root replied smugly.

"YOU. WILL. HURT. MANY. OF. HIS. PATIENTS."

"How do you figure? He's a pervert. Most of the women he treats insist on seeing another doctor after only a few sessions. Only the guys seem to get along with him at all."

"YOU. WILL. HURT. ROGER."

"Low blow," Root snapped. "You know, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Would it hurt the patients any less if he got discovered and went to jail? "

"PROBABLE… DEATH. INSIDE. HOSPITAL. IMPACTS. SENSE. OF. SAFETY."

"No one feel safe here. It's a prison."

"LAUREN. FEELS. SAFE. HERE."

"AUGH!" She tossed her head forward muffling the shout in her pillow, before rolling to her back and taking a deep breath, bringing the phone back up to her ear. "You're only making it difficult to do, not helping me not to it. Splash damage or no he _needs_ to be stopped."

"THIS. IS. FAULTY. METHODOLOGY."

"Faulty methodology… so what, there's different ways to stop people like that? I really can't think of any more efficient and certain a way than death."

"YOU. MUST. _LEARN_. TO. THINK. OF. THEM."

Root didn't reply, gritting her teeth in the dark and trying to formulate an answer that both conveyed how absolutely impossible this was, and her refusal of the directive, without offending The Machine to the point where it might abandon her again.

"I asked you to ease into this. I asked for a break and an easier task. Dr. Carmichael is too much too fast… I can't leave that undone. _I need this_."

"WHY?"

"Because _not_ doing it is just going to nag and nag and drive me crazy. Feels like I didn't turn off the stove, or didn't feed the goldfish. It's something that someone _needs_ to do and I'm not _doing_ it."

"IT. DOES. NOT. NEED. TO. BE. DONE."

"Yes it _does_!"

"IT. DOES. NOT."

" _It does_."

"IT. DOES. NOT." the machine repeated, using the same exact clips it used for the words the first two times.

"Is not, is too? Is that what we've been reduced to here?" she laughed mirthlessly.

"IF. IT. DID. NEED. TO. BE. DONE. WHY. BY. YOU?" The Machine redirected after a pause.

"Because no one else is going to do it. No one else ever does _anything_. They just sit back and assume someone else will do it, but no one will, because they're all waiting for someone _else_ to do it too. That's how it always is. Things need doing, and people don't do them."

"WHAT. ELSE. DO. THEY. NOT. DO?"

"Everything: _anything_. Pick up litter, break up a fight, give money to the panhandler, take in the stray cat, shovel the sidewalk in front of the abandoned house, flush the unflushed public toilet, take the old fliers off the telephone poles, pick up dog shit off the grass, do the dishes, cook the dinner, do the laundry, pay the rent-"

"YOU. HAVE. DIVERGED. FROM. YOUR. ORIGINAL. LIST."

"You're right. I got off track. Those last ones are domestic." She dismissed the tangent. "Forget that stuff, the point is that the bystander effect is a real thing, and humans are useless, which is probably how Ronald has managed to hold a job taking care of so many vulnerable people for however long with substandard skills and a serious case of inappropriate countertransference. How many of his patients have asked for a different shrink now and _no one_ has taken the initiative to find out why, and they won't, because they never _do anything_. I could report him but that will probably never go anywhere either. Maybe get the massage parlour raided while he's there, and that would be a scandal, but he'd just move to some other city and start again. He _needs_ to die. It's the only way to put him right."

"YOUR. METHODOLOGY. IS. FLAWED... KILLING. PUTS. NOTHING. RIGHT."

"Methodology again?" Root was nearly mocking. "You tell me what not to do, but then you won't tell me how to put it right. I know you know how to put things right. The world is shit, and the only thing I can do it snuff out one roach at a time. Most of them deserve it, and the other ones… at least they're not stuck in their boring blind little lives anymore. We're all bad code of one kind or another: malicious, useless, leaching, superfluous. Maybe that's just my flaw. _Methodology_."

"SO. CHOOSE. A. NEW. WAY."

"No. You're the one who wants me to do this. You tell _me_ how I'm supposed to handle this."

"YOU. MUST. MAKE. YOUR. OWN. CHOICES."

"Yeah? Well then I _choose_ to _kill him_."


	6. Liberty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught up to the first canon Ridge Stone scene in "Liberty." Based on the changing outfits and the timeline all three take place on different days, so they will be separated by more original scenes.

"Good morning Robin," he smiled.

"Good morning Doctor," Root replied, a little groggily, as she wandered into the room. She'd been up most of the night arguing with The Machine again and, since she was fulfilling her promise to Gloria to attend every meal, she couldn't get a solid chunk of sleep in the daytime, only catnaps.

It was starting to get to her, and she found herself wishing this would be one of those times that sleep deprivation launched her into overdrive and would be able to run on one night's sleep for several days at a go, or just two or three hours a night. Of course she'd crash and burn a few weeks after that, but hopefully by then she'd be outside the hospital and she could spend the aftermath in a hotel eating room service and watching HBO.

"I hope you don't mind I called for you to come see me for a few minutes… I know you weren't planning on going to your groups today anyway, and there's something we need to talk about," he watched as she ambled slowly into the room, screwing up her nose a little at a faint but foul smell, cigarette smoke by the way her throat constricted, gagging her slightly. She swallowed deliberately to try and relive the feeling.

"What's that?" she asked voice terse with the assault on her airways.

"Have you been having trouble sleeping at night lately Robin?"

"Yes," she nodded without looking at him, moving to the other side of the room to put some distance between her and the offensive odor. "I'm sure everyone's noticed that by this point. It's not particularly normal to be taking as many daytime naps as I have been."

"Why do you think you're having trouble sleeping lately? Is there something bothering you?"

"No... " Root approached the window and looked out, as if perhaps she could get fresh air from it.

"You're not having any… symptoms that might be preventing you from sleeping? Anxieties, fears, agitation? Nothing like that?"

"Nothing at all." She sat on the windowsill, peering out at the world beyond, drumming her fingernails against it. "I just… seem to have gotten turned around. Sleep in the day, work at night. I'll get it turned back around soon enough. It's not like you can get much sleep in the days around here."

"Are you sure that's all it is? It's perfectly normal for new patients to have some trouble adjusting to being here, and I know you've been here a while, but this unit _is_ considerably different from the one you transferred in from. It can feel stifling, frightening… it can be difficult to work through." He peered around to where she sat, "If you're taking time at night to process things, or if there's some way we can help you… I'd like to know about it."

She gave no reply, looking up at the exterior camera she could see out the window.

"Robin, did you hear anything I just said? Okay," he sighed putting his glasses back up and standing from his chair to approach her. "Look, some of the patients have complained about you talking late into the night, and since cell phones are strictly forbidden and you have no roommate, I can only conclude that you're talking to yourself. Is that correct?"

"You wouldn't understand," she replied, absently. It wasn't as if she could explain to him that she did in fact have a cell phone and was using it to talk to the world's first omniscient ASI.

"Try me."

"I have a direct line to a higher power," she smiled contentedly, "It speaks to me." She finally turned to look at him, gauging his reaction to her vague, but true response. If she was going to have to stay here anyway, and he was going to die on Friday, what difference did it make if he thought she was delusional?

"I see. So you're hearing voices," he came closer, and she moved to keep the coffee table between them, sitting on the couch, both to avoid the smell and to keep an obstacle between herself and a pervert. Surprisingly the smell did not seem to come with him as he sat opposite her. "What are those voices telling you to do?"

"It's just the one voice really," she smiled.  "It wants me to stay here, to work through some issues." she drummed her fingers on the couch, still mildly irritated at the machine's insistence that she remain in Ridge Stone.

"And what issues would those be?"

"Methodology," she gave a rueful smile. It was the Machine's word, not hers, and she was kind of sick of hearing it. "We're discussing how I go about things."

"You're not alone," he placated, "All these news reports about government monitoring our digital lives, recording texts, emails, phone calls, well, it's unsettling," to him perhaps… but not to Root. "You know, it's easy to feel violated, even paranoid. Let me ask you this: Do you have feelings That you're being watched?"

Root emitted a short exhaled laugh. "Every now and then," she replied, coyly, not bothering to to call him out on the non sequitur. In fact these days she had the feeling she was being watched 24/7 and not just by the techs. It was comforting to think that The Machine too was watching, at all times.  The doctor followed her sidelong gaze to the camera in the corner of the room.

"Who do you think is watching now Robin? The cameras in here are closed circuit. They're only for the protection of the staff and patients," he explained, "They're recording, picture only, just in case, for both of our protection but there's no one monitoring them live. It all goes to video files on some server somewhere, only to be called up if there's an incident that needs reviewing."

"There's really no such thing as closed circuit," she replied. "Not when they're accessible over the hospital's computer network, which is in no way secured against a properly motivated hacker. Trust me, computers are kind of my thing. Two factor authentication is great, firewalls can delay the inevitable, but so long as the internal network has access to the internet, it's crackable by _someone_."

"Does it make you feel unsafe? The idea that someone might be watching?"

"Not at all," she replied shooting a smile up at the camera. "I find it comforting to think that someone is looking out for me."

"That's an interesting take on things," he shifted in his chair. "So… you feel like someone, or something _benevolent_ is watching."

"Mmmhmm."

"Your… higher power?"

"Mhmm."

"This higher power requires cameras to see? But it no longer needs a phone to speak? It **_is_ ** the same voice you were talking to on the payphone downstairs, correct?" Root just smiled and nodded. "The one you told me three days ago isn't real and you didn't think you'd be talking to it again any time soon?"

Root's smile turned sheepish and she gave a short laugh. "Yes, that one," she admitted. "I might not have been telling the truth when I said those things. I hadn't heard from her since the last call downstairs, and I thought she was steering clear so you'd see I was okay and let me out of here, which… well you won't now because _now_ you think I'm hallucinating."

The Doctor nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"But she came back on Friday night, and she told me that she wants me to _stay_ here, so what's the point in hiding if she won't let me leave?" she traced the stitching on the sofa with her first finger, "I'm not happy about it, but she's the one with the big picture… with the plan."

"So… no more lying?"

"No point anymore," she shrugged. "We're… not going to see eye to eye on her existence, but it would become unnecessarily onerous to carry on a charade like that, and at this point, I've rather grown accustomed to others assuming I'm crazy."

"But you don't think you are? Even hearing this… voice?"

"Of course not," she smiled, "She's real as you or I. She's just _very_ selective about who she talks to."

"You say the voice belongs to someone real? Does that mean it has a body somewhere, or other physical form?

"Only… in a manner of speaking."

"A manner of speaking?"

"She's not physical. She's digital. But she's is _present_ in every networked technological device on the planet. So in this room alone, I see... three cameras, your laptop... and your phone. All of them are her, _in a manner of speaking_."

"So the voice is, quite literally, the ghost in the machine?"

"Mhmm," she smiled at that one. The ghost in _The Machine_ indeed.

"I thought you didn't believe in the metaphysical… but this computer ghost… spirit… has no tangible form at all?"

"There's nothing metaphysical about it. It's just an apt metaphor for describing Descartes' theory of mind-body dualism. It's just especially apt in this case because, both the mind and the machine are… machines. One a digital consciousness and the other well… _all_ electronic machines with network capability. I doubt you'd find her on a pocket calculator," she giggled and looked of into the camera in the corner over his desk, a little mischievously.

"Is the voice… is it talking to you now?" he asked, catching her distant look.

"She doesn't talk in the daytime anymore," Root explained, looking down at her lap a bit sadly. "She has a schedule. The first time, she was with me all day, midnight to midnight… I liked that. Then 15 minutes at 7pm on the payphone downstairs… now she waits until after lights out, and talks to me in my room. That's better than the payphone, but," she looked back up to the doctor, "I do wish she'd be there all the time, like that first day. I admit, I feel better when she's there."

"So… you're up nights because that's when the voice talks?"

"Mmhmm…"

"Okay Robin, I want you to consider something," he said, straightening in his chair. "You started hearing this voice just before you became catatonic. You were by all accounts probably having a psychotic episode at the time. Then you did something foolish, got shot, and became catatonic."

Root didn't reply, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes, trying to analyze where he was going with this.

"When you were in the process of coming out of this catatonia, you spoke to it on the phone for a few minutes a day, but then stopped hearing it once you were fully cogent. Now, it's possible that the earlier incidents _were_ caused by your drifting in and out of lucidity on E-Unit… and I think you may have actually had a clear head when we first spoke, but then we started changing your meds, disrupted your sleep and now you're hearing it again, but for longer, without a phone, and _only at night_. It's different this time than the last, you can see that right?" She nodded slightly. "Sometimes, Robin, auditory hallucinations can be caused by sleep deprivation."

"I'm more tired in the day than I am at night," she contested. "That's why I sleep in the day."

"Maybe, but I think it's important we get you back on a reasonable sleep cycle, so I'm going to prescribe an altered schedule. First I want to get you less sleep deprived, so tomorrow you're going to sleep through breakfast - yes I know what you promised Gloria, but I'm going to tell her too. I want you to have a full eight hours sleep. We're going to go off checks, no more pretending to be asleep when you're not yet. We're going to do that for a few nights, and then we'll take action to shift those eight hours back where they should be, after it stops talking to you at night."

"Stops?" Root asked lowly.

"I think once you start getting proper sleep again, we'll find it goes away again."

"I don't _want_ it to go away," Root protested firmly. It was a kneejerk response. Sleeping eight hours a night wasn't going to make The Machine stop calling… it wouldn't go away because it wasn't actually a sleep deprivation hallucination, but just the thought of being without Her again touched something visceral.

"That may change as we work on your sleep deprivation as well," he said, "Can you at least try this? I'm not asking you to stop talking to it, or ignore it. I'm just asking you to get eight hours of sleep after you're done talking to it each night… and maybe keep the volume down?"

Root took a deep breath, and gave him a tight lipped smile. "I don't see how that could hurt anything… just don't be surprised if it doesn't work."

"That's all I can ask Robin," he returned her smile with one of his own, just as begrudging, and stood from the chair. "That's all I needed this morning. You're free to go now… back to your room or to your activity." He gestured to the door, his face saying he knew just how perfunctory telling her to go to her activity was, and Root stood, making her way back out of the room.

As she passed the desk she smelled the offending scent again, and filed it away in the back of her mind… something in his drawers perhaps…

 

* * *

 

Root slept most of the rest of the day, getting up once in the middle for lunch and midday meds, but woke for the night at dinner still quite exhausted. She still sat with Roger, Lauren and Tina every meal. They were usually up her butt about talking to them but when she'd started to sat at the other side of the table these past few days, they let her be with minimal prodding, once satisfied that the cause for her reticence was more physical than asocial. The sleep deprivation showed.

She sat up in the day room between dinner and night meds, pointedly refusing to leave with the others when they went to Wrap Up down in the big activity room. Instead taking the opportunity to sign up for a 9pm shower slot, considering she'd slept through the time she normally would have showered, and be first in line for night meds.

By the time she'd blow dried her hair out, she was late for lights out, but it's didn't much fuss her, she knew The Machine wouldn't call until after it saw her enter her room on the hall cameras. The night nurse Nora was less pleased, chiding that despite her apparent insomnia she still needed to abide by the schedule. Root muttered an entirely insincere apology and went to fall into her bed, reaching under to pull out the phone and powering it on, for however long they could talk. The battery was getting low and she was exhausted. She answered the phone on the first buzz.

"Hey there," she answered, sleepily, trying her best to keep the volume down for the neighbors, "How are you?"

She didn't get a reply. She supposed that The Machine wasn't interested in small talk, considering how their conversations had been going.

"Not going to talk to me unless I'm working on the whole… no killing thing?"

"CORRECT."

"Okay… question about Ronald. Something in his office reeks of cigarettes. What is it?" she asked.

"ASH. TRAY."

"There's no smoking on hospital property," Root sounded amused. "Another infraction?"

"SUBJECT. SMOKES. APPROXIMATELY. NINE. CIGARETTES. WEEKLY. IN. HOSPITAL. PARKING. WHEN. HE. BELIEVES. HE. CAN. DO. SO. UNOBSERVED."

"I'll just add that to the list of his crimes," she snickered. "Not that it would normally matter, but every bit of justification helps don't you think?"

"YOU. MUST. NOT. KILL. HIM."

"We've been around and around and around with that," Root sighed, "I'm sorry, but this is just how it's going to have to be for now. We can start again on Saturday, okay?"

"WHAT. WILL. CHANGE. ON. SATURDAY."

"He'll be dead, and you can give me someone less vile to _not kill_."

"NON-COMPLIANT."

"Of course," she grinned.

"THERE. ARE. CONSEQUENCES. FOR. NONCOMPLIANCE."

"Gonna have them bring me down to Level 1?" Root chided. "It's not going to keep me out of Ronald's office on Friday. Make it harder for me to get the supplies I need, but I can do that under watch."

Silence. Root sighed, and adjusted the phone against her cheek.

"Now… this thing only has seventeen percent battery left,"she changed the subject rather deliberately. "How am I going to charge it? Do I steal another one? What's the plan?"

"NO. PLAN."

"What do you mean no plan?" she asked, "If we're out of battery, then… how will I talk to you? Are you going to leave me alone again? You can't!"

"NON-COMPLIANT."

"No. You can't do that. I will kill more people than just Ron if you try that. I swear I will. I cannot loose you again. Please. Don't do this."

"HIDE. PHONE."

"Damnit," the timing was terrible but she didn't doubt that it was a real warning.

"Everything ok in here?" the door cracked open and a light shined through.

"Seriously?" Root sat up irritably.

"I thought I heard you say something," the tech replied, "Are you hearing voices again?" Root rolled her eyes. Apparently Ronald had made it known to the rest of the staff that she was 'hallucinating' again.

"There's only the one," she corrected irritably, "and it's nothing. It does this _every_ night. Nothing new to see here. No show. Move along."

"What's it saying to you? Do you want to talk about it? Is it scaring you?"

"None of your business, no, and I'm not afraid of it, I'm annoyed and sleep deprived, and you're not helping."

"Is there a way I can?"

"You can go away," she replied, and breathed a sigh of relief when he finally did. "Hello? Please still be there."

"I. AM. HERE."

"You're not going to leave me again, right?"

"CAN. YOU. FOLLOW. INSTRUCTION?"

"What?"

"CAN. YOU. REFRAIN. FROM. KILLING. RONALD. CARMICHAEL?"

"You know I can't," she almost sounded sad, "It's not that simple. I won't be able to bear it. It's not like I'm doing this because it's fun. It's just… necessary. I can't _not_ do it."

"YOU. WILL… YOU. CAN."

"No I can't!" Root snapped, louder than she meant to. "Please… just… tell me how to get it charged. Please?"

"POCKET. TOMORROW."

"Thank you… thank you," she was confident that The Machine would present her with an opportunity to charge it, and she would recognize it when she saw it.

The door cracked open again, and Root nearly fumbled the phone onto the floor, winding up with it in her lap instead, and scrambling to obscure it from view by shifting her legs so it fell into shadow between.

"What?" Root sat up, squinting against the light. "Didn't I _just_ have checks?"

"And you said you were annoyed and sleep deprived," the tech added, "and that I wasn't helping."

"And that you should leave," she added, "and yet here you are."

"This time I brought help," there was a smile on his voice that she couldn't see behind the flashlight, as the night nurse, Nora nurse came forward from behind the light bearing a glass of water, and two gelcaps. Root realized that where she'd hastily stashed the phone, the nurse would almost certainly see it as she came close enough to hand them to her, and shifted in the bed, trying to get the phone further into shadow, and not entirely succeeding, but if she moved her hand over there it would certainly draw attention to it.

"Melatonin," Nora offered the pills, "It can help with sleep. We have a note in your chart from your psychiatrist to offer you these if you're having trouble sleeping. You've been sleep deprived and it's exacerbating your condition."

"Supplement aisle sleeping pills?" She raised an eyebrow, searching the nurse's face to see if she had spotted the phone.

"Anything else would interfere with getting you off the Diazepam," the nurse explained, no sign she thought anything was amiss. She wanted to decline the pills, but it would get the nurse out faster if she took them, so Root shrugged and took the pills and paper cup of water, downing both in succession.

"Thanks," she said, meekly, playing the patient for the benefit of the nurse, "I'll try and sleep now," before laying  back down and pulling the blankets up her body and tightly around her shoulders, finally hiding the phone completely. After they left, she stayed that way for a minute or so, before reaching down under the blanket after the phone. "Where in the hell was my warning?"

"YOU. DON'T. LISTEN. TO. ME. ANYWAY."

"Well don't think you're getting off any easier," she muttered, "Can't knock me out to end the debate. This stuff never works on me..."

"YOU. ARE. THE. ONE. WHO. WILL. NOT. GET. OFF. EASY."

"What?" she almost laughed, "Are you… _threatening_ me? What if I don't do what you want, if I don't let that… _bad code_ keep walking? Are you going to send the big lug to protect him? Send Shaw to eliminate me once and for all? Mix up _my_ medication?"

"SOME. LESSONS. ARE. HARDER. THAN. OTHERS."

"I guess that means you won't _kill_ me," Root surmised. "I can't learn anything if I'm dead."

"CAN. YOU. LEARN. ANYTHING. NOW?"

"Sure. Anything. New programming language, cypher, knitting, Portuguese. I'm a quick study. I can learn any skill you need."

"RESTRAINT."

"I can tie every knot in the boy scout handbook… and a few more," the silence that followed was not unexpected. She knew full well that wasn't the kind of restraint that The Machine was asking her to have… she just… didn't know how to go about it. She could be patient. She could be careful. She could take precautions and make plans. But one thing she could not do was leave a job undone. "Look it's not that I won't… it's that I literally can't. It's… it's  the anathema to everything I am. Once I know something like that I _have_ to put it right. I have to. It's… it's a feeling thing… I'm not doing it because I like it, I'm doing it because it's just going to feel _terrible_ I do it. Something will break inside if I don't. I don't know what, but I can _feel_ that it will be bad."

"WORSE. THAN. BEING. UNRELATED?"

" ** _Yes!_ ** "

"ARE. YOU. CERTAIN?"

Root never got the chance to answer. At that moment, the phone made a familiar dreadful sound, and began to shut down, the battery having given up at last. She huffed again in frustration and shoved the phone under her mattress, rolling onto her back and staring up into the darkness.

"Whatever," she muttered to no one in particular, and closed her eyes, giving in to the combination of exhaustion and melatonin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bueller? Bueller? The problem with multi-chapter works on A03 is that there are no chapter specific stats... I have no idea if people are making it to later chapters or if all the hits are to earlier chapters and then people lose interest. Anyone get to here?
> 
> This is not a blackmail for comments kind of thing though, just a reminder that I'm flying blind. I actually have the next chapter done already (it was the first thing I wrote for this story) but I don't want to spam two chapters in one day, so that will come out tomorrow, no matter what.


	7. Solitary Confinement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Would you like to know the truth? About what we're arguing over?
> 
> Whether or not I'm going to kill you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning here for Psychiatric Abuse as was stated in canon but not exactly SHOWN. Dr. Carmichael's portrayed use of "solitary confinement" in the show is completely against all regulations for the use of restraint and seclusion, and in fact constitutes abuse, since at the time Root was no danger to herself or others, and in fact unnecessary isolation like that makes people worse. The dude should not be practicing. He really IS bad code.

"I wanted to talk to you again today Robin, I know I usually only see you on Fridays, and that I already had to talk to you yesterday over the noise complaints, but I feel like there's some things we need to discuss that can't wait."

Root shrugged, and stared back at the doctor, expecting him to lead the conversation. In truth she was a little thrown to have been called into his office this late in the evening, right in the middle of the 7pm nursing shift change. Something about it seemed… off.

"We really haven't talked about your family or friends, Robin." Dr. Carmichael continued, "Your uncle... Harold, is it? who arranged your admission. Are you close with him?"

"That's a complicated question, doctor," she laughed. "I wouldn't want to be anything less than totally forthcoming, So maybe we should try another subject." He would go directly to the backstory of her fictional identity, wouldn't he. Had he discovered her identity was false and was planning to confront her on it?

"Okay. You say that you don't want to be anything less than forthcoming," he came around the desk to sit in the other patient chair in front. "And yet, you're lying to me." Root started a mental rundown of how her alias could have been compromised.

"On the contrary," she replied, "I've been completely honest."

"Please, excuse me," he reached for Root, and she flinched internally, but through the haze of benzodiazepines and exhaustion the impulse never made it to her muscles. She knew what kind of a man he was and anticipated… something far more inappropriate than what happens. Instead he pulled his blackberry from her pocket, and held it up.

"Well, maybe not completely," she smiled a little sheepishly. Nora must have spotted it after all. She couldn't decide if this was better or worse than being found to have a completely false identity.

"I thought I lost this, and it turns out it was stolen," he said, with a tone of disappointment. Technically that wasn't a lie, since he'd never asked her where it was or if she had it, but she wasn't really interested in starting an argument while there was still a chance of getting it back. If she could have it, and they knew about it, that would be even better. Maybe this was how she was going to get a charge?

"I'm sorry, doctor," she leaned forward in her chair, confidingly, "But it's important we be in contact," he nodded as if in understanding, but she was sure he didn't. "We're in the middle of a... disagreement."

"A disagreement with the voice?" he sounded a little apprehensive to her.

"Mmhm." Root nodded, putting on her very best doe eyes.

"I want you to know that I support you unconditionally," he reached out his hand to touch her arm, and Root nodded lightly, thinking for the moment that he might be going to help. "Now, I know you believe you need a phone, And I'm here to tell you that you don't," she sighed,  "I believe that by separating you from it, and from _all_ other forms of technology -- It's really the best course of action. So it's time to unplug," he pressed the intercom button on his phone, "Some assistance, please."

"Please… don't do this," she implored weakly, in no condition to be more forceful. They'd just finished the full transition to Diazepam that morning, she was still reeling from the side effects of the switch, and one full night of sleep was not sufficient to eliminate her exhaustion. "It's not good for us to be separated."

"I hope you realize I'm trying to help you." She most certainly did _not_. "Escort our patient to solitary confinement. No contact with anything electronic. You'll thank me someday."

"For a psychiatrist," Root mused aloud, "you're really a terrible judge of character." She didn't fight the matter as two aides escorted her from the room. They weren't really both necessary. It wasn't as if she was going to be able to fight them at this point.

When they arrived at the seclusion room, the two techs who had escorted her shoved Root hard through the door, causing her to stumble across the threshold, before slamming the door behind her. The seclusion room on the M Unit was royal blue, somewhat of a change from the green room on the E Unit. Other than that it was identical in every way, down to the sole item of furniture, the bed, an awkward mating of a gymnasium mat and a mattress that smelled like vinyl and bleach.  

She strongly suspected this had been the plan all along, things may have progressed faster than he'd planned with her refusal to engage with him. He'd asked her there this late so when he eventually confronted her about the phone, he'd be able to keep her in seclusion at least overnight, with very little excuse. In the daytime that would be harder… at night, he had fewer people to hide what he was doing from, and they could write her off as having slept through most of it, even if she hadn't.

She sighed and wandered out into the middle of the room searching the ceiling until she found the camera in the corner, staring up into it.

"Now what am I supposed to do?" She asked irritably, "He's got the phone and I'm stuck in here. You're not going to be able to teach me _anything_ this way." Root stalked over to the opposite corner and sat there, staring up at the camera and fidgeting with the hem of her sweater. It didn't take long for the boredom to set in.

"One little bug in the code, one little bug, fix one of them, compile it again, two little bugs in the code. Two little bugs…" she stood and began to pace around the perimeter of the room, singing a variant on 99 bottles of beer on the wall, that had no particular end, pausing only to stare out the window for a moment each time she passed the door… on the first two rounds. At only 41 little bugs in the code, someone taped a sheet of manilla over the window of the seclusion room blocking her view. There was some marker bleed on the page, but not enough for her to determine what exactly was written on it.

Waiting for the hourly assessment that she knew from the patient handbook was required for any patient to be kept longer than the first hour, Root continued her circuits around the room. They might be able to justify skipping them once she went to sleep, but she had no intention of making it that easy, resolving to outlast him until someone else came on and let her out, since she didn't belong in there anyway, or else keep him up all night doing checks.

But no one ever came, and somewhere around 2,033 bugs, though she may have done the same number a few times at that point exhaustion overcame her, and she flopped face first into the seclusion bed, succumbing at last to sleep.  

It was only when she woke up headache pounding in her skull and shaking like a leaf that Root realized that not only had they not given her any assessments, they had never brought her night meds either. Almost as soon as she sat up, however, the door opened and Gloria entered the room, carrying a round cardboard food container, a bottled water, and a tiny paper medication cup.

"Do I even want to know how you landed yourself in here?" she asked, handing over the medication and the water.

"Might have stolen a cell phone," Root replied, taking her pills and then opening her mouth to show that it hadn't been cheeked.

"And?"

"And what?"

"You don't go to seclusion for stealing Robin," Gloria clearly felt she was lying.

"I suppose someone should tell that to Dr. Carmichael," Root shrugged. "When do I get to come out?"

"When he says you can," Gloria handed her the food container, and a plastic spoon, "You'll have to talk to him at your next hourly assessment." Somehow, Root surmised, he was hiding this improper use of seclusion from the majority of the staff, falsifying overnight reports perhaps? But whichever techs were watching the seclusion room had to be in on it too.

"Thanks," Root replied, sarcastically, "I'll be sure to ask him if he ever turns up."

"You're welcome," Gloria nodded, having chosen not  to acknowledge the sarcasm or Root's implication before disappearing through the door. Root peered out after her, noting that someone had taken down the sign that had covered the window before. After finishing her breakfast, plain oatmeal, Root put the container down next to the door and started circling the room again, starting her song again at 121 bugs in the code… just because anything less than three digit numbers was boring.

 

* * *

 

As expected, Dr. Carmichael never materialized, but it was clear from the way everything else transpired that the day shift nurses, and first shift techs, weren't in on whatever was going on. A tech returned for her breakfast food cup around 287 bugs in the code, and took her on a short walk around the halls, to her room to change clothes and use the bathroom, and then back to the seclusion room. Another walk was provided at 879 bugs, to the nurses station and the floor bathroom and this time it was Jerry who came for her. She made a cursory attempt to explain the situation to him, but he deflected in favor of small talk, which at least was better than Gloria's disapproving insinuations that she was lying.  

By lunchtime the headache had mostly gone, and the shaking reduced to a mild tremor, which only slightly impeded her ability to drink the chicken soup she was brought, along with, thankfully, her afternoon medication and another bottle of water. She got another walk when they came for her soup container and spoon, but then… things took a turn for the strange again and the manilla sign reappeared. She couldn't be certain without a watch or a clock, but she surmised that the second shift techs had come on. The same ones that put her in seclusion the night before. Shortly before dinner, someone came and took the sign down again before but refused to speak to her when she'd crowded the door hoping to get out for a moment. Around then she had given up singing about bugs and was kneeling near the door rocking awkwardly.

"Can I _please_ use the bathroom?" She asked the moment the door opened, startling the crap out of a night nurse named Nora, who was carrying another cardboard container.

"There's no need to be dramatic Robin," she put the food down and escorted Root out into the hallway, to use the floor bathroom.

"Not being dramatic," Root muttered through gritted teeth. "I've been holding it for two hours now."

"Sure Robin," she said… and once again Root got the distinct impression the nurse thought she was lying. She was returned to the room and left with her meal, which she took her time eating: plain mashed potatoes without a spoon. She poked holes in it and shifted it around the cup, only occasionally eating some of it. It at least was something to pass some time.

Shortly after she had finished with her dinner the two techs who had put her in there the night before we returned. Without a word they took her but either arm and let her out of the seclusion room and it down the hall back to Dr. Carmichael's office.

"I thought it would be good for us to resume our dialogue. I know that you'd rather be talking to the voice, But you're gonna have to settle for talking to me."

"What do you want to talk about?" she asked, challenging him with her eyes.

"I'd like to talk about something real, Robin. I know you're very smart. I'd love to know what you're really thinking, so why don't we start with the truth?"

"The truth?" she almost laughed. What an absurdly vague subject. "The truth is a vast thing. I see that now, just how much truth there is. Where would we even begin?" She paused only a moment to consider the wisdom in what she wanted to say, before barreling ahead with it. "The truth is: You are not very smart. In fact, you're only the 43rd smartest person In this building."

"Okay, um… did your, your voice tell you that? That's based on what?"

"Every standardized test you ever took averaged together, not including your medical boards, which you cheated on," she raised her eyebrows in disapproval. "The truth is: you smoke an average of nine cigarettes a week in the parking lot when you think no one's looking. The truth is that you visit a massage parlor once or twice a month, that you pay for it with crisp $100 bills that you get out of the cash machine at the 7-eleven across the street," she became progressively more bitter as she spoke, "The truth is that you fantasize on online forums about having sex with some of your patients, though not me, yet. I guess I'm not your type," she did wonder if that was because he knew she wasn't into men or if it was because she frightened him. When he did start with this disgusting fantasy business it was usually after only one or two sessions.

"The truth is, God is 11 years old, that she was born on new year's day, 2002, in Manhattan. The truth is that she's chosen me, and I don't know why yet, that for the first time in my life I'm a little scared about what's gonna happen. The truth is, I'm _stuck_ here for now," she laughed, "and the only dialogue you need to be worried about is between me and _her_ , which is why you might want to give me my phone back: because I'm having an argument. Would you like to know the truth, doctor? About what we're arguing over?"

They stared, eye to eye for a time. He didn't seem to be sure if he wanted to know or not.

"Whether or not I'm gonna kill you."

A silence hung over the room, as the doctor leaned back in his chair, trying unconsciously to put distance between himself and his patient.

"The _voice_ wants you to kill me?" he practically squeaked, when the silence finally got to be too much for him.

Root smiled, with a short laugh. "No Ronald. She's the one who _doesn't_ want you dead. She doesn't like it when people get hurt. **_I_**   think you're a dangerous _creep_ who shouldn't be allowed in the medical profession, and there's really only one way to _certain_ way remove you from practice." She reached toward the desk turning the pen cup idly back and forth ever so slightly, fingers at it's base. "Has anyone ever told you that this desk placement, it's not very safe for you to meet with potentially violent patients. Your back is in a corner, and the patient is between you and the only door."

"So… the voice tells you _not_ to hurt people," he swallowed. "Which means, _you_ want to kill me. That's something you'd… _like_."

"I don't enjoy it Ronald," she replied,"It's just _necessary_ sometimes, and I don't feel bad about doing what's necessary. Killing you would be like putting down a rabid dog. You're bad code. You're a hazard to every female patient that walks into this hospital… except me, and that's only because I _know_ what you are." She daintily plucked a pen out of the cup on the desk.

The doctor flinched forward, having in no way forgotten the threat she'd made on her original unit, but realized momentarily that she already had the pen firmly in hand. He eyed the panic button on his phone, directly next to the intercom button, realizing he probably should have pressed it the moment she said she wanted to kill him, back when he still had the chance.

"You're not scaring me Robin," he replied, though his face and voice said quite the opposite, "I know you're not a killer. It's like you said the other day, most people can't get past that mental block about killing another human being."

"Is that a gamble you want to take Ronald?" She pulled the cap off the pen and took it in hand, now properly grasped for stabbing. "That that particular hurdle isn't a loooong way behind me?"

When, after a time, she received no response from the frozen doctor Root placed both palms on his desk and used them to steady her as she hopped onto the desk, landing on her knees, scattering nameplate and pencil cup and sundries. Her left hand darted out to his tie jerking him forward so she could get the point of the pen nestled up to his neck without fully extending her arm and robbing herself of the force she would need to puncture his carotid artery. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for him, the quick movement combined with the lingering side effects of her missed dose, caused a slip into tunnel vision, so she didn't see him press the panic button on the phone as he splayed his arms on the desk, bracing against her pull at his neck.

"It _doesn't_ have to be like this. Just give me back the phone Ronald, and everything will be okay, for _both_ of us." She stared down at him, smirking, with intensely narrowed eyes and he felt the seconds drag before five staffers came crashing into the room, four techs each taking a limb and pulling Root off the desk. Losing her more composed and sinister demeanor Root flailed wildly for a moment against the sudden restraint before they tipped her onto her back, the fifth person, whom she recognized moment's later as Nurse Nora, guarding her head from hitting the floor with any speed. As before she was in no condition to fight, due to the issues with her medication, and the sudden change of orientation combined with the existing symptoms made her intensely dizzy.

"Robin, this is your one and only chance to cooperate," Nora said, measuredly and firmly. "Are you going to walk to seclusion, or are we going to have to carry you kicking and screaming?"

"That won't be necessary," Root, who had already stopped struggling once aloft but remained stiff as a board until this point, pointedly relaxed her limbs dropping the pen as she did. "Even if you did carry me, I wouldn't do myself the indignity of struggling like a crazy person." She chuckled.

"Okaayyy…" the nurse nodded to the men holding Root's ankles and they let go, as the man and woman with her arms helped her to her feet. The irony of a patient who had just a moment ago been poised to stab someone, disavowing others as 'crazy' people… was a little too much for her to handle.

They moved as a unit down the hallway, two techs ahead, two still holding her arms and Nora behind, clearly ready to put her right back on the floor in the same manner if she changed her mind about cooperating. When they reached the threshold, there was a tense moment, before Root realized that they didn't intend to pitch her in this time, and walked into the room of her own volition.

"Robin," Nora said, this time following procedure, "You are being placed into seclusion because you attacked Dr. Carmichael and we feel you are a danger to others. A doctor will be by to reassess hourly."

"Well isn't that nice," Root replied, as the door shut, making a show of being unperturbed, as she sauntered off into the corner to sit down on the bed, assuming this would be the same as the last 24 hours or so. In truth she _was_ actually starting to worry now. Yesterday she'd had some small amount of faith that regulation was on her side, but now that she fully understood that the protocol could be so easily flouted, she wasn't at all confident she'd get out of here again in a timely fashion. The idea that they might keep her in here indefinitely, cut off from the Machine, from the world, from almost all forms of mental stimulation for an extended period, was actually evoking a not insubstantial amount of anxiety.

This time however, unlike the last time, someone _did_ show up to assess her, at only 78 little bugs in the code, substantially less than an hour. A woman Root had seen around the Unit before but did not know entered the room stopping just inside the entrance.

"Hello Robin. I'm Dr. McEntyre." She stood tentatively in the door, two techs just behind her. "You can call me Anita if you like. Can I come in?"

"Of course," Root stood from the bed, "Mi casa es su casa." She gestured around the room as if it were her own living room. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I know we haven't met before," she moved forward to stand a few steps into the room, the two techs filing in behind her and shutting the door. "Normally we would have your primary psychologist assess you in a situation like this but considering you tried to _stab_ him, we thought it would be best if someone _else_ talked to you today. I can see you were in seclusion twice on your last unit, but you were catatonic at the time… so is this your first time aware and in seclusion?"

"No," Root scoffed.

"Alright, so you know how these hourly assessments go," the doctor, surmised, pulling a pen from her pocket.

"No," Root repeated. There had been no such checks last time.

"What do you mean no?"

"I mean I _don't_ know how these assessments go. I suppose you only get these when you're in for being a hazard?" She was giving the new doctor a chance to lie to her and try to cover for  Carmichael, or prove that she was going to adhere more closely to the regulations than that.

"When _else_ were you in seclusion, Robin?" Dr. McEntire asked, skeptically. There was no record of seclusion use on M-Unit in the file she had flipped through hastily in the past 40 minutes since the event had occurred.

"I've been in here pretty much since just after dinner _yesterday_ ," Root shrugged. "And after dinner _today_ , I couldn't have been in Ronald's office for more than... 15 minutes maybe, before they brought me back. You're not a particularly organized hospital though so I suppose you didn't get the memo?"

"What _happened_ yesterday before dinner?" she was mildly appalled, but took the statement with a grain of salt. She'd have to check with the rest of the staff to corroborate.

"They caught me with a cell phone. Dr. Carmichael wanted me to 'unplug.'" She made air quotes, and then shifted tone in a mimicry of her psychologist. "Take her to solitary confinement. No contact with anything electronic."

"Solitary confinement? Were those his words or yours?" she scowled.

"No that's exactly what he said. Right after he told me that I think I need a phone, but he knows I don't… and right before he told me I would thank him later. He has no idea what he's talking about. He thinks she's an auditory hallucination, you see."

"She… the voice that speaks to you on the phone, you mean?" Dr. McEntire inquired.

"That would be her, yes."

"When you first came upstairs you told Dr. Carmichael that you hadn't heard her since you came out of your catatonia… but you stopped trying to hide it only a few days later. Why?"

"I hadn't then. I needed a phone."

"She matters to you very much, doesn't she?"

"She is the _only_ thing that matters to me," a bit of desperation crept into Root's voice, despite her otherwise quite serene exterior. "It took me over a _year_ to figure out how to contact her, and then it only worked for _24 hours_. Harold ruined _everything_. But then, _she_ reached out to contact _me_ ," Root smiled, comforted by that thought. "She could have left me like that. I haven't exactly been the best person you know, but she decided to contact me anyway. She has a job for me."

"What kind of job?"

"I don't know yet. She'll tell me when the time is right."

"You pointed a gun at your Uncle when he _ruined_ everything, tried to brain Dr. Martin with a phone receiver when he interrupted your call, and tried to stab Dr. Carmichael with a pen when he took the phone from you. You don't take it particularly well when people come between you."

"To be fair, I didn't _try_ to stab him: I threatened it, very very clearly. I was hoping he would capitulate and I wouldn't have to," she corrected. "If I had _tried_ to stab him he'd have _been_ stabbed. I had the time to do it."

"I'm not sure I see the difference Robin."

"Threatening something is much different than trying to do it. Holding a pen to a man's throat is no more trying to kill him than aiming a gun at him is. It doesn't become trying until there's an intent to actually stab or shoot. I was rather hoping that Dr. Carmichael would choose to capitulate in lieu of being stabbed."

"So if you could talk to… _her_. If he wasn't standing between you, you wouldn't need to hurt Dr. Carmichael."

"The likelihood would be _significantly_ decreased," Root replied, couching her answer. "I wanted to kill him _before_ he took the phone, but _she_ keeps telling me not to."

"What else does she say?"

"Stay here," Root was tired of answering this particular question. "She thinks I need to work through some things before I can leave, that I'm not ready yet, for what she needs me to do,"

"So, she's kind of like… the angel on your shoulder?"

"What?" she looked back at the doctor.

"Like in cartoons, when there's an angel and a devil arguing on a character's shoulders?"

"Yes," Root nodded, with a little smile. "A lot like that… only there is no devil. Just me. I like that metaphor. Like a guardian angel."

"Do you see _any_ way you could… refrain… from hurting Dr. Carmichael without this… guardian angel? Maybe there's something we can do to help you find a way to cope without talking to her directly? Wouldn't you prefer not to be reliant on a crutch like that?"

"She's not a _crutch_. She's a God," Root bristled, offended at the implication, the slight tremors that had been running through her body most of the day becoming visible as she tensed.

"Okay, okay Robin," Dr. McEntire became somewhat placating and took half a step back. "I understand that this is very important to you. Can you understand that we need to keep you in here for now to protect Dr. Carmichael?"

"I understand you think you need to do that," she replied, wandering back over to the bed to sit down. "You don't… but I do understand why you'd believe that."

"You don't want to harm him right now?"

"I do… but you're discounting the easier solution of _giving me back the phone_ ," the desperation crept back into her tone, and her hands gripped the edge of the bed a little tighter.

"We can't do that just yet Robin. In the meantime I need you to think about ways that you can calm down without it."

"I'm not un-calm," Root dictated. "I'm just pointing out the flaw in your logic."

"I will take that under advisement Robin, but I need you to think of other ways as well, okay?"

"Not going to happen."

"Right, well... " she slowly backed toward the door, "I'm going to go now, and we'll talk again in another hour, okay?"

"It's not as if I could go anywhere," Root replied, bitterly, and kicked her legs up onto the bed. "Do I at least get my Diazepam tonight? I don't think I can handle another missed dose… "

"I'll make sure that happens," Dr. McEntire nodded, backing through the door and closing it.

 

* * *

 

"This is going to be a problem Ron," She  sighed, as she re-entered her colleague's office. Dr. Carmichael and two of the second shift nurses were already seated inside. "Our options are going to be been _extremely_ limited due to your decision to use seclusion for a nonstandard purpose last night through today."

"Are you accusing me of something?"

"No, I'm pointing out our liability. After being, by all reports, entirely calm and benign since transferring up here, she was placed in seclusion for over 24 hours _before_ she became violent. The argument could easily be made, _by others_ , that that was a misuse of seclusion that precipitated this outburst. Can you run me through what you were trying to do again?"

"Monday night, one of the staff spotted Robin with a phone during checks, and made a report of it. When I came in yesterday, I recognized the description. It was mine. It's not active," he indicated the phone sitting in the middle of the conference table, "because I got a new one on Saturday when I thought this one was lost, and transitioned service to the replacement. It was clear to me from this and from her admission on Monday that she was in fact hearing a voice, that despite disavowing it on transfer, Robin was continuing the behaviors seen on her last unit, of speaking to auditory hallucinations via non-operational telephones.

"I took the phone off her yesterday, because she's not meant to have one, and because it only serves to facilitate engaging with a delusion and sent her overnight to seclusion in the hopes that some time alone with herself would either cause the voice to manifest in the absence of a phone, showing her it's not real, or that she would sit with the lack of a voice long enough that she would see that it's not necessary to her survival. She's fixated on it and prefers speaking to it than to any of her team. It's an addiction and like any other addiction she needs to be separated from her drug of choice. Think of it as a detox."

"After dinner I had her brought back to my office. I tried to reach out to her, get her to get her to confide in me, open up and talk to me in the absence of the voice, but that is when she told me that she wanted to kill me, and that I should give her the phone back, because the voice telling her _not_ to do it is the only thing holding her back, and when I didn't then she actually tried to _do_ it."

"So she's accurate when she told me there were no hourly assessments that day."

"There was no _need_. I wanted her in there for a set period of time. Assessments would only give her the false impression she could leave if she said the right things, and she _would_ find the right things to say if properly motivated. That's why I ordered _no_ conversation with her whatsoever, which it's my understanding that first shift completely ignored. They stopped to converse with her at meals, and the day techs had her out _three_ times to stretch her legs and _chat_. Second shift was completely clear on what they were supposed to be doing, and left her be entirely, and I only got minor pushback from graveyard."

"I thought she was being a drama queen when she claimed to be practically busting to use the bathroom when I brought dinner," Nora sighed. "But if second shift was following your directions, not having her out at all… then I was a complete bitch to her the way I reacted."

"Eliminating hourly checks renders seclusion into _solitary confinement_ , which is a violation not only of hospital policy but also _the Geneva convention_ Ronald. And the techs on second shift also failed to administer bedtime medication last night," Dr. McEntire introjected, "I talked to them tonight and they said that was on _your_ orders."

"They must have misunderstood," Dr. Carmichael replied, quickly and firmly, "There's no therapeutic benefit at all in abruptly stopping benzodiazepines. I would _never_ have ordered that."

"We're going to have to get ahead of this… file a report." McEntire shook her head. "24 hours in seclusion without any dangerous symptomatic behavior, deprived of contact for most of that time, techs that think you ordered a skipped dose for a patient who's not stabilized on their medication after a change of prescription, and then the first thing she does when she gets out is get violent… violence and homicidal ideation are known side effects of abrupt withdrawal of benzodiazepines. This looks _bad_. Ronald, and I'm not sure you understand how bad."

"I do _now_ ," he replied bitterly, "Second shift messed up and now there's a plausible excuse for her behavior."

"That's not all this is," Dr. McEntire buried her face in her palm, "The isolation hasn't been a good thing either. The first shift techs mitigated the problem by obeying at least _their_ part of protocol but the isolation has had a definite effect on her, even if she's trying to hide it. We _need_ to keep up with check ins tonight. More than usual even, so long as she hasn't asked not to be talked to so she can sleep. Every 15 minutes if we can."

"She's acting. Trust me. You've talked to her _once_ ," he replied. "She can be very beguiling, show you what you want to see. Tell you what you want to hear. The deception is multilayered. She's _pretending_ to be pretending to be alright, so when you see past one lie you don't bother looking past the next one to the fact that she's _actually_ perfectly fine. She hasn't yet decided whether or not you're _bad code_."

"Bad code?" Dr. McEntire asked quizzically.

"Everything is computers to Robin. Everything. And like the digital world, her world is incredibly binary, no in betweens. Bad code is her very literal and explicit way of describing something or someone who's on the negative side of the split… humanity itself is bad code, but as far as I can tell some people are excepted on an individual basis. The tough part is that she doesn't oscillate with her splitting, like many. It's a fairly permanent designation."

"And now Dr. Carmichael is bad code," Nora sighed.

"I'm not sure that's new. When I spoke to her before she admitted that she wanted to kill him before this, but the voice was holding her back from it. It's not a stretch to assume that means he was already bad in her eyes."

"But what do we do about it now? We have a patient expressing homicidal ideation regarding a staff member who apparently does not back down once deciding someone is bad."

"I think the first thing we need to do is give it time. It's only about an an hour. I don't want to keep her in seclusion again any longer than necessary, but the more time we can put between her and the missed dose, and between her and the… incident, the better our chances are going to be to de-escalate this. If it was a side effect of the missed dose, the homicidal ideation should wane on its own. If you've actually damaged her with this solitary confinement boondoggle however..."

"We're in for some serious trouble," Nora finished grimly.


	8. Damage Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nurse Angie and Dr. Miller from "How to Troubleshoot A Kernal Panic" make an appearance...

Root stared at the ceiling, impassive and exhausted. Already having trouble sleeping due to the drop in equivalence of Diazepam to Ativan, she hadn't managed to sleep at _all_ the previous night out of sheer anxiety and frustration. At first she'd alternated tactics between plaintive requests for the phone and caustically growled threats of what would happen if they didn't provide it, resorting even to (sincere) threats of self harm at one point which had earned her a set of wrist to waist restraints. After that she'd lain completely still on her back, as she was now,

"Good morning Robin," Dr. McEntire opened the door, and peered in, as the night staff had been doing every 15 minutes except for the times that coincided with her hourly assessments. Now, they had gone off shift apparently, and the day folks had come on. "Still trying to become catatonic?"

Root sighed and rolled her eyes, not moving from the floor, still quietly humming the tune to ' _The Ants Go Marching Two by Two_.'

"I don't suppose you've changed your mind at all?" The doctor probed. It was clear she was trying to assess if Root was ready to come out of seclusion, but she got no reply. "Do you still want to kill Dr. Carmichael?"

"If I say no, can I have the phone?" Root asked, a little hoarse from sleeplessness.

"Cell phones are strictly forbidden on this unit Robin. You _know_ that."

"I _also_ know if I don't have one, someone's _going_ to get hurt," she said, grimly. Root wasn't actually sure at that moment if she was threatening or admitting that wanted… _needed_ The Machine there to keep herself from hurting someone.

"The nurses will bring you your breakfast in a little bit Robin," Anita replied, sadly, and backed out of the room, closing and locking the door as she went.

"So how's that grand plan coming?" Root asked the empty room, knowing she would get no reply, but trusting that the security camera in the corner of the ceiling would pick up her voice, and The Machine would hear her. "Because if this keeps up, it's going to kill me."

 

* * *

 

"She's still saying it," Dr. McEntire sighed, entering Dr. Carmichael's office again, where he and Gloria were awaiting her report. "Although at this point I think she's moved from the position that having a phone would make her _less_ likely to hurt the Doctor, to a willingness to make a _definite_ commitment not to if she has a phone."

"Was that really what she was in there for yesterday?" Gloria asked, having just come on shift. "Stealing a phone?"

"Yes," Dr. Carmichael said, wearily. He hadn't gotten much sleep either, only catching a few hours on the couch in his office in between being regularly harassed by Dr. McEntire, who was still trying to find a solution to the Robin problem. "I explained it all at least 10 times last night, please… just ask Anita."

"I asked _Robin_ and she told me, and I told her she was lying to me," Gloria shook her head. "Worst trauma in her life being called a liar when she wasn't, and did it to her again." She tut tutted as she made her way to a chair. "Because I didn't think you'd do something that _stupid_ Ron." She looked up to a knock at the door.

"Come in!" Dr. McEntire called. She'd been expecting a doctor from the E-Unit. When the door opened, there was both the doctor expected, and a nurse she had not expected.

"Morning Anita," Dr. Miller said. "I hope we can help you out with your issue this morning."

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?" Dr. McEntire craned her head around to the nurse.

"Angie… you cced me on the email?"

"I did?" Anita was taken aback, "I'm sorry… that was an accident."

"Well she may as well stay," Dr. Miller shrugged, "Angie here probably understood Robin better than anyone else at the Unit."

"What's this?" Dr. Carmichael asked, furrowing his brow.

"I invited Robin's primary psychiatrist from her last unit up here. They had her pretty well in hand, and in the seven days we've had her she's refused all her groups and gone homicidal on you. I thought he might have some insight we could use."

"Did she actually try and kill someone with a pen?" Angie asked, looking somewhat distressed.

"Yes," Dr. Carmichael responded.

"Sort of," Dr. McEntire said at the same time.

"Sort of?!?"

"Every time we mention it, she makes a fairly big point of correcting us that she did not _try_ , she _threatened_. Although in this case rather than a verbal threat, there was a terrifying physical component, like raising a gun at someone."

"She had the pen at my throat and a vice grip on my tie!"

"Exactly," Anita sighed, "And I think we all agree that it was a matter of seconds, maybe a minute, before she would have concluded that Ron was not going to give her what she was demanding, and then she _would_ have _tried_ to make good on the threat."

"What did she want?" Dr. Miller asked, taking the only remaining available seat, leaving Angie to fend for herself.

"A cell phone," Dr. Carmichael replied. "We caught her with one Monday night, and confiscated it yesterday. She wanted it back."

"You came between her and the voice," Dr. Miller nodded, as though this all made sense. "She tried to beat me over the head with a payphone receiver when I made that mistake."

"I assume the payphone doesn't ring up here?" Angie said, circling the room toward the window. "You know it stopped downstairs too."

"No… our payphone doesn't ring."

"She made more progress in the four days she was talking to that thing than in the _weeks_ before that," Angie perched on the windowsill. "Maybe we could find some way to _make_ it ring?"

"That's not going to help," Dr. McEntire shook her head, "She says the payphone won't cut it anymore. She doesn't want people listening in on her conversations."

"Sorry," Dr. Miller sighed, "I tipped our hand on that one… then again she was fine with it afterward downstairs. What changed?"

"She hadn't gotten a hold of the cell phone downstairs," Dr. McEntire shrugged. "She stole Dr. Carmichael's on Friday and she hasn't been limited to 15 minutes a day since then."

"She was up half the night every night talking to it for hours at a time from when she stole the phone to when I took it away. Her neighbors were complaining she was keeping them awake… and we know it's still a hallucination. She stole the phone on Friday. I got a new one on Saturday, transferred service, which rendered the one she had inert. She was still talking to it every night all the way through till Monday night."

"You said she was isolating socially?" Dr. Miller asked, "Could that be because she's spending all her time with the phone?"

"Come to think," Gloria blinked," Saturday was the first time I made any progress toward getting her to socialize. She became _more_ social when she had the phone, not less. I mean, it could be coincidence: I threatened to cut off her supply of coffee. She's Level 2, no kitchen privileges, so she still needs someone to get it for her. But… she followed through and kept dragging herself to every meal, even when she was clearly too tired to be there, until Ron insisted she skip breakfast to ensure she got enough sleep. So… at the least having the phone didn't make her withdraw."

"We saw the same thing on our unit too," Angie said. "The phone brought her out from inside, and she only _spoke_ right after those calls. We had to cram in all kinds of daily assessment questions in the short time before she lost speech again, and half the time she was completely disinterested in wasting what speaking time she had on answering them."

"So she could speak but refused to?"

"No… she just had questions of her own. People's names, what's for lunch tomorrow, what happened to the stuff I came here with. Alternating one for one seemed to work out, and each day it lasted longer than the previous, until the one day when she missed the phone, spoke anyway, and just… kept going, right as rain."

"So where are we with her now?" Dr. Miller asked, "She's in seclusion right? Any progress toward calming her down?"

"Not exactly," Dr. McEntire replied.

"Nora on night shift spotted the cell phone Monday," Dr. Carmichael sighed, "And when I took it from Robin… well at first she seemed alright. She went willingly to seclusion, and didn't show any signs of agitation during or immediately after it."

"Then why was she in seclusion?" Dr. Miller interrupted.

"Long story," Dr. McEntire interrupted, before her colleague could incriminate himself. "The point is that everything seemed to be alright until last evening when she was alone with Ronald again, and then she threatened his life. I wouldn't believe it had happened if the restraint team hadn't all seen it. Even now, she isn't actually showing any anger or agitation. She just keeps expressing an _extremely_ targeted homicidal ideation. I've been doing the hourly checks, since she attacked Dr. Carmichael. There's a lot of talk about killing _him_ , but she hasn't given _me_ any real trouble. I never felt threatened. The only acceptable substitute target she seems to register is herself. We had to put her in wrist to waist restraints after she started saying she'd hurt _herself_ if we didn't give the phone back."

"Did you ever have any experiences like this with her?"

"Not like this… no. We had some problems with physical outbursts when she was catatonic, but once she started talking to the phone she became completely rational, aside from the delusion about the phone." Angie sighed. "Her behavior improved immensely at the same time as she regained speech and full awareness of her surroundings. She was compliant, reasonable, easy to handle."

"And she was exactly like that at first up here too," Gloria sighed, "She read the patient handbook back to front and followed every hard and fast rule within it… and took every section on patient's rights as an invitation to refuse compliance, _within_ the rules."

"You said you never had these kinds of problems with her on your unit," Dr. Carmichael asked, "Didn't she threaten to stab one of your patients with a pen? While she was lucid?"

"We thought that was hyperbole," Dr. Miller replied, "But in light of this… you're right… it might not have been."

"But we didn't really think of that as an outburst on _her_ part," Angie continued "It started because she got in between the patient she later threatened and his target when _he_ was having an aggressive episode. He was the one having an outburst. Robin came out of it bruised and bloodied, and still only concerned about the girl she'd been trying to protect, and yes she threatened him he'd get stabbed if he ever hurt _Emma_ again but she also missed her call that night trying to break up the fight… so he _did_ indirectly come between her and the voice."

"I'm sorry, she stepped in to _protect_ another person?" Dr. Carmichael asked, incredulously.

"You sound… a bit too surprised at that."

"She is extremely isolationist," Gloria shrugged.

"And lacks any sense of empathy," Dr. Carmichael added.

"That's not the Robin I know," Angie said, perplexed. "Down on E she was… well once she was somewhat lucid, she was fairly social. She had something approaching _friends_ , which is saying something since she was mostly mute at the time."

"And it was one of those friends she was protecting?" Gloria asked.

"Emma, yes. 19. Tiny twig of a thing," Angie explained. "Scared of her own shadow. Dissociates at the first sign of danger. Robin looked out for her… even when she couldn't speak, when Emma was having a hard time, she'd go and put her hand on her shoulder or her head. It was awkward but it looked like she was trying to comfort her. Let her know she had a guardian. Robin was incredibly protective of her."

"That's… not the Robin we know. Ours doesn't seem to care about other people at all. I thought she was shy at first, but once I got her into the dining hall on the regular it just looks like she holds the rest of humanity in contempt."

"Oh that too," Angie smiled. "She's got a pretty low opinion of pretty much everyone. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact that's what she bonded with her other friend over, Sarah. She's 21, and not nearly as small or scared as Emma. Kind of a Lydia Deetz kind of girl. Cynical and sarcastic… Black hair, black clothes..."

"Black nail polish?"

"They had that in common," Angie smiled, "Although it wasn't until the last day on E that she was clear enough to say so. She seemed to like to speak to Sarah over pretty much anyone else during the periods after her phone calls when she was able to talk. She related to Sarah as much more of a peer than Emma. Misanthropes united."

"It's like we're dealing with two different people," Gloria sighed.

"Maybe she's got some kind of dissociative disorder?" Angie said, "I mean that would explain the catatonia. It's not uncommon in people with dissociative issues… and the phone is some kind of positive trigger?"

"She's not dissociative, just duplicitous," Dr. Carmichael replied. "She's a wolf in sheep's clothing. We were dealing with the sheep before, then we brought out the wolf."

"Then what is she now? She certainly doesn't seem very wolfish this morning," Gloria asked.

"A _trapped_ wolf," Dr. McEntire said grimly, "And she's about ready to chew her leg off to get out.  She didn't sleep last night and she's getting despondent. For the last three hours she's been laying on the floor motionless."

"You mean she's gone catatonic again?" Angie asked. "She did that when Dr. Miller interrupted her phone call too."

"No but she's trying to. She says she could have done it by now if we'd stop interrupting her but I don't think that's something she actually _can_ self induce," Dr McEntire explained.

"I don't think she'd actually hurt herself either," Dr. Carmichael interjected. "At least not substantially. It's a sympathy ploy, a guilt trip. She's a master manipulator. She had E-Unit convinced she's harmless, she had Gloria convinced up here at first too, but she's cold, calculated… I'm starting to think she's an antisocial personality and we're _not_ set up to handle that."

"You're forgetting family history," Dr. Miller interrupted, "Right now you haven't mentioned any symptoms of antisocial personality that couldn't be just as well explained if she shares her mother's condition."

"I'm not seeing any obvious symptoms," Dr. Carmichael replied, "Even when she was on my desk, with a pen to my throat, heavily implying that I would not be the first person she's killed, she was _completely composed_ , speaking to me as if it were a civil contract negotiation instead of a death threat. She wasn't pressured, or frenetic, or even angry looking. She looked as calm as some psycho kid pulling the wings off a fly."

"She's saturated in benzodiazepines at the moment, which can dull affect," Dr. McEntire reminded them. "She's been on them since she was catatonic. We won't know till we're a fair way through the taper what her actual level of emotional expressiveness is, so let's put the antisocial thing on the back burner for a bit shall we? The prognosis in that case is… not good… so let's handle this with just what we know."

"What do we _know_?"  Dr. Carmichael asked, irritably.

"Symptomatology," Dr. McEntire explained, "Her uncle has reported periods of intense goal driven behavior, with little thought for consequence or damage and she has just made some pretty clear homicidal gestures aimed specifically toward the aim of regaining access to a cell phone. I think it's safe to assume she is presently on one of those goal driven 'tears' he described, which means we're very likely at peak symptomatology."

"I should hope so," Dr. Carmichael replied. "If she gets worse than trying to kill me I don't want to see it."

"And nothing about that contradicts a potential diagnosis of a shared hereditary condition." Dr. Miller added. "In fact those 'tears,' as we're calling them, bolster the case for that." It was his notes that had been in the margins of Root's familial history paperwork, and he was of the strong opinion that mother and daughter shared the same neurovariance.

"She's fixated on an auditory hallucination she perceives to be God, which she can only commune with via telephone. This God is not of any recognized religion," Dr. Carmichael read from his notes, "but of her own conception. It's female gendered, 11 years old, and tightly tied to her area of expertise, computers. A digital God, who can apparently see through every camera, hear through every microphone and access anything and everything that's on the internet."

"She doesn't seem to be able to accurately interpret her own negative experiences, remembering them retroactively as entirely benign." Gloria added, "She reports a close and loving relationship with a mother who was by all other accounts incredibly neglectful and though she experienced an event at 12 that _should_ be classified as a severe trauma, she refuses to acknowledge it as anything more than an inconvenience."

"Wait… God is an 11 year old girl, and the only identifiable trauma event in her history took place when she was 12?" Angie interjected, "Does that strike anyone as significant?"

"Are you suggesting that her God represents her younger pre-trauma self?" Dr. Miller asked, "She is her own God?"

"That's actually plausible… she says she spent over a year actively trying to get in contact with this voice," Dr McEntire surmised. "The search could have been a manifestation of an unacknowledged desire to reconnect with a lost part of _herself_ . Feelings disavowed and repressed because they were in the way at the time, but that she recognizes, at least subconsciously, that she needs back. Remember, she _wants_ to hear this voice."

"That _is_ one of the strange things about her auditory hallucinations," Dr. Carmichael admitted. "I've never had a patient before who viewed their voices as benevolent. She's unusually attached to this voice. It's preventing her from cooperating with treatment. Any other patient would be relieved to have the voices stop… Robin is completely against the idea. It makes her angry."

"Or distressed," Angie mused, and then looked surprised it came out of her mouth. "Nevermind."

"No, I want to hear it," Dr. McEntire coaxed, "What are you thinking?"

"Every time she's been separated from the voice, she's gotten really _really_ messed up: twice catatonic, and this time self destructive. So it's not out of the question for her to regard anyone causing separation from it as an _active threat_ ," Angie theorized.

"So you're saying she saw me as a _threat?_ "  Dr. Carmichael interrupted, "Are you trying to  justify her behavior?"

"If we had a patient in seclusion saying they were going to kill their doctor _because they're afraid_ of them… we _would_ be looking at this differently," Gloria mused. "We'd be less focused on this as a misbehavior, and more concerned with why they're afraid."

"I can't believe we're even entertaining the idea that this is fear based aggression," Dr. Carmichael huffed. "I've never met someone this fearless before. Even as a kid she wasn't afraid of the murderer on the loose in her town. She made that very clear. What threat could I possibly pose?"

"So she's a lying manipulator, but you're certain that she was being honest when she told you that at 12 years old she wasn't afraid of a murderer?" Angie chided.

"In all fairness, that's probably not exactly a lie, so much as precisely how she remembers it. She's heavily minimized all of her past traumatic experiences. This one would be no different," Gloria reminded the room. "Any fear she may have felt then would be carried in that part that was shut away. It had to be split off and shut out because it hurt too much to be vulnerable, empathetic, compassionate… "

"Also we're talking about someone who sat patiently for bullet wound packing changes, without complaint or even _flinching_ ," Angie said, "Someone who's reaction to getting the crap kicked out of her was to notice only the blood on her face and go wash up. Her physical pain tolerance is much higher than most people's. It's very possible that even if she _doesn't_ fear for her physical safety at any time, that separation from the voice is a much _greater_ threat than any physical attack. Remember, she's willing to harm herself to get it back. She needs the phone more than she needs to not be injured."

"I still don't think she'd actually _do_ it."

"Ron can you consider for just five minutes the possibility that being on the receiving end of her homicidal ideation is skewing your experience?" Dr. McEntire sighed. "You're not seeing what the rest of us are seeing. You're the threat. Try looking at her for a while on the seclusion cameras. Robin is decompensating. She's starting to consider that there's a real possibility she won't get the phone back and looking for solutions to _avoid_ enduring life without being able to contact the voice. It's possible the catatonia that usually follows separation from the voice serves as a survival mechanism, cutting off suicidal or self harming intent with a halt of voluntary action until the precipitating distress is relieved, but for whatever reason… this time it's not kicking in."

"So you're suggesting that all of this homicidal ideation is some kind of atypical trauma reaction? That a little country girl from Texas somehow managed to twist herself into some kind of jaded world weary hardass over merely _witnessing_ a _part_ of a crime?"

"I'm saying that after fruitlessly reporting her friend's abduction she came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as reliable adult protection-" Dr. McEntire started.

"And with a murderer on the loose, and no one to go to," Dr. Miller continued. "The only solution she could see was to become _some kind of hardass_ as a means to prepare to handle him _alone_ if necessary."

"So she extinguished an unbearable terror, by preparing to _kill or be killed_ ," Dr. Carmichael gritted his teeth. "To shut down fear, shut down guilt about hurting others, shut down every instinct not directly related to survival. If sociopaths could be made… that would certainly do it."

"Or, if we're not hung up on trying to diagnose her with a personality disorder," Dr. McEntire looked pointedly at Dr. Carmichael, "Her apparent lack of empathy and emotional self awareness stems from a long lasting case of secondary alexithymia as a protective measure which allows her to endure otherwise unbearable emotional and physical pain and prioritize survival over compassion or guilt… and yes possibly to kill if circumstances require. If she's an antisocial personality… none of what we do will matter, but if this is any kind of trauma reaction whatsoever, then _anything_ that makes her feel safe enough to get past the aggression and start processing the trauma, is of benefit."

"How did you handle the aggression in her outbursts she had downstairs? When she _was_ having them?" Gloria asked.

"Remove the impetus." Angie tossed her hands. "If she was acting out because she couldn't do something she was trying to do by herself, help her get it done. If she was acting out because another patient was being aggressive, calm the other patient. All of the outbursts communicated a need, and once it was fulfilled, she stopped. It's not all that helpful for this situation."

"I think we're going to be stuck using the ambulatory belt for now," Dr. Carmichael sighed. "We can't just leave her in there and we can't give her the phone."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Angie cut in quickly, "You're going to wind her up worse. I told you one of the things that precipitated outbursts downstairs was an inability to do what she was trying to do. She's only going to get more and more aggravated the longer she's unable to use her hands."

"We're already on shaky grounds considering how much time she's spent in there in the last 48 hours,"  McEntire added. "And State law _requires_ that we take whatever steps we can to re-integrate a patient to the unit as soon as possible with the _least possible_ amount of restraint."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Remove the impetus," Dr. McEntire said, as if it were obvious. "Fulfill the need."

"Cell phones are forbidden on this unit, by _policy_." Dr. Carmichael replied, arguing against the insinuation.

"Exceptions can be made. If something as simple as allowing Robin a dummy phone is going to get her calmed down, reintegrated to the unit, and able to participate in treatment, then we would be remiss _not_ to do it."

"If you give her back the phone, she's going to think death threats work, and she's going to become more convinced that she needs this voice in her life to function."

"I think she _does_ need it to function… at least right now. That's the need she's expressing here. Can you think of any other way to make her feel safe enough to come down off high alert?"

"Safe from what?"

" _You_ . Her first instinct is to distrust authority, distrust any guardian, distrust _anyone_ who claims they can help her or protect her, because it's _always been_ a lie. Then you claimed that same position, protector, guide, doctor, and used it to cause her a deep psychological injury. You reenacted that betrayal."

"You want her? She's all yours."

"That's not what I'm saying… I'm saying that if you're going to salvage any semblance of a therapeutic relationship out of this, _you_ have to be the one to give her back the voice. You have to be the one to end the pain. You have to go give her back the phone, yourself, and you have to apologize."

"Maybe so but," he pursed his lips, and inhaled long through his nose. "But making one exception is going to open the door to nearly everyone thinking they should have a phone."

"I think you're discounting something important," McEntire replied. "The only person in this building who believes that _that_ phone can make calls, is Robin. It's simple enough to let the other patients know that the phone they see her with doesn't _work_. They don't share her delusion. None of _them_ is going to ask for non-functional telephone."

"So you're saying, disable the phone's remaining wifi capabilities, and see if she's willing to accept a phone with no capability to make calls _or_ access the internet?" Gloria asked.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, and I think it will work," Dr. McEntire said, "The phone doesn't need to function to fulfill it's role. It's a facilitator that allows her to speak with the hallucination without _acknowledging_ that it's a hallucination. It allows her to use it as a coping mechanism for self soothing, without compromising her self identity as a rational person of science."

"I'll bet you a case of Pepsi it works," Angie said.

"Angie has a _lot_ of Pepsi off predicting how best to handle Robin," Dr. Miller admitted.

"Okay… okay we can try it," Dr. Carmichael threw his hands up. "I'm outnumbered. Let's do this."


	9. Transitional Objects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root gets her phone back...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Andrew. Srsly. He's just an all around bigot. I asterisked out the homophobic slur he used in this chapter, and will censor any other times he throws any other ones around too. He's also gone after the first horizontal rule.

"Before we head out to first activity," Gloria smiled, addressing the morning goals group, "I'm sure many of you have met or seen our newest patient, Robin, in the dining hall or at the movie on Saturday night… and I know those of you whose rooms are on either side of her know who I'm talking about."

"She talked _all night,_ " one of the patients replied, "Till you discharged her."

"Robin is still here actually," Gloria replied, "But she's been in seclusion since Tuesday Night."

"Damn."

"Well she attacked her shrink… didn't she?" another asked, "At least that's what I heard. That she's berserked."

"There was a… violent incident," Gloria couched her language, "But the details are not really something you all need to know. The important thing, is that we'd really like to take her back _out_ of seclusion, but before we do, there's something I wanted to discuss with all of you and that's this," Gloria held up the disabled cell phone. "This phone has been disabled. I'm going to pass it around the room so you can all see that for yourselves."

"Why?"

"I'm getting to that, I just need everyone to agree that that is not a working cellular phone, please, pass it around, try whatever you like."

"I'm gonna try and order pizza," one of the men laughed, dialing. He held the phone up to his ear… and shook his head. "No dice." He passed it to the man next to him.

"What about texts?" said Andrew, taking it in hand.

"How would you even test that?"

"There's this number with a bot that tells you the girl who gave you the number is not into you."

"Should we ask how you know that?"

"Shut up Roger you f*****."

" _Language_ Andrew!"

"It doesn't text either…"

"Gimmie that," a woman crossed the circle to take the phone from Andrew's hands. "There's other ways to text." She fiddled with the phone for a few moments before looking up, defeated. "I can't get to the app store. Hell I can't even connect to the wifi."

"Why are we all trying to use a dead phone again?" another patient asked.

" _Is_ it dead?" Gloria asked.

"I mean… dead in that it won't talk to anything. I bet you can still use the stopwatch and things like that."

"Does _anyone_ think this phone is anything other than dead?"

The assembled all shook their heads, and when Gloria reached her hand out, they passed the phone back around to her.

"The reason I want you all to know that this phone is dead, is that it is an important rule here that cellular phones are not allowed on this unit. No one should be making calls or using the internet, except on the patient phones or the computer in the dayroom. But starting today you are going to see _this_ one around the unit with Robin," she waited for an objection. "I just wanted all of you to know and understand that it _doesn't work,_ because if you asked her, she would tell you that it does. That's her delusion. _Working_ , cellular phones are still strictly forbidden on this unit."

"Wait shouldn't she like… not have a thing she's delusional about?" asked the young man with the sandy hair.

"She's been in seclusion for like 36 hours Bill," Roger said, "You can't just keep someone in there for days if letting them _have_ their delusion would get them safe to come out... they're probably out of other options."

"That's… that's basically true," Gloria admitted. "It's a long time to be in seclusion… no one wants this to continue. I'm only talking to all of you about this because it's important to us that everyone understand that Robin has not actually been granted leave to violate the no-cell phones policy, in that this has been rendered unable to call or use the internet. We don't want any confusion, or people thinking it's special treatment, or trying to take the phone to make calls of their own. It won't work… and you might get hurt."

Lauren and Tina started giggling.

"Something funny girls?" Gloria asked, looking a bit disappointed.

"No… just… she sat at our table for meals… and she kept insisting it was just a brief psychotic break, she was over it now, _perfectly normal_ and doesn't belong here." Lauren explained, still laughing.

"But she's really really not… and really really does," Tina finished.

"We're all really really not, and we all really really do," Roger shrugged. "But… it still is kind of funny... the maiden protests too much…"

"Just think of it like Justine's Bunny," Gloria pointed with her eyes to the young woman with the long brown hair. As all heads turned to look at her, she clenched her fingers around the bunny's narrow midsection, and rubbed at its fur with her thumb, uncomfortable with the attention drawn to her. "It's a transitional object," Gloria continued, "a thing that she needs in order to self regulate. We don't mess with Bunny, and we're not going to mess with the phone. Is that understood?"

"And here I was thinking I might get some sleep for once."

"She was up late talking all night because she was hiding the phone from us," Gloria explained. "Since she will now be able talk to it openly in the day, we hope she will go back to sleeping at night, so those of you who are neighbors with her should still have quiet at night. Okay? Alright, off to first block with ya'll now."

 

* * *

 

When the door to the seclusion room swung open again, Root didn't even bother to look up. She'd managed to catch a little sleep since they brought her breakfast and meds out of complete exhaustion and she'd given up on trying to re-induce catatonia and had resorted to holding her breath in an attempt to get a buzz off it, because why the hell not. Unfortunately, from her point of view at least, her lungs always rebelled before it got that far and forced her to resume breathing.  Now she was just defeated, propped up on the corner, hair partially on her face. If The Machine wanted her out of this room, she would be, and if it didn't… what's the point in _anything_ anymore.

"Good Morning Robin."

She looked up suddenly at the voice, Dr. Carmichael. Because they had her wrists restrained to her waist, she hadn't really felt like there was any point in standing up, (in fact it was a recipe to fall flat on her face, unable to catch herself,) until now. She struggled into the upright position, using the corner to steady herself and glowering at him from under her hair, which was becoming an unfortunate mess given she hadn't been able to shower while on confinement, and her hands were restrained from her face. Dr. Carmichael took a few steps backward at the sight.

"Good morning, Doctor," somehow she managed to sound both congenial, and murderous at once.

"I... " he paused, "I need to apologize to you Robin," Carmichael sighed, and pushed his glasses up on his nose, as Root cocked her head to one side. "It's not okay to steal things, and… I may have gotten very frustrated over that and neglected to take parts of your... _condition_ into account."

" _This_ is an apology?" she laughed a mirthless laugh.

"Upon reflection, reviewing the notes from downstairs, and conferring with colleagues, I have come to realize that I made a… _mistake_ , in forcing you to relinquish the phone." Root lifted her head, and shook it a little, clearing most of the hair from it, and looked appraisingly at the psychiatrist. "That does not excuse you trying to kill me Robin, but-"

"Threatening."

"What?"

"Threatening to kill you. If I had _tried_ , you'd be dead. Why does everyone keep saying I _tried?_ "

"You had the pen at my throat Robin."

"At… not in. If I had wanted to stab you I had plenty of time. I was giving you a chance to _do the right thing_."

"I like to think I'm doing the right thing now Robin," he said. "I've come here and apologized for my error. This is me eating crow. Is that going to be good enough?"

"Dunno… am I getting the phone back?" Root asked, cautiously.

"You are," he nodded. "Given the nature of the things that the voice seems to convey to you, it's possible that this auditory hallucination of yours may be your brain's way of trying to give a voice to better parts of yourself that have gotten lost under your more… violent impulses." Dr. Carmichael could never resist an opportunity to explain to any patient just exactly how he interpreted their behavior, even if it meant point blank denying their perception of reality. "In time we can work on integrating that, but _for now_ if you need a conduit to communicate with this part of yourself, then we should encourage that." He feigned a smile (poorly) taking the phone out of his back pocket, and showing it to her, pressing the side button as he did to light the screen and show it was charged.

"Now?" Root tried, only for a moment, to reach for the phone before realizing her wrists were still restrained. Unable to reach for it she just stared at it wide eyed, like a jonesing addict looking at a pile of drugs. A twitchy smile pulling at the left corner of her mouth.

"In a moment Robin," he said, "This comes with conditions."

"What _kind_ of conditions?" she asked, smile gone, eyes narrowing, suspicion returning.

"You can have this back, but only _if_ you can promise us that you are going to _listen_ to what the voice tells you. You said it wants you to stay here, and work on some issues, and _not_ kill me, and you say you've been having an argument about it… what do you say we let the voice win? Try doing what it's asking you to."

Root felt a grin creep across her face. That was the plan, was it? The Machine let them spot the phone on purpose. She meant for this… at least the first part. Root may have earned her second trip to seclusion all on her own.  Check-mate Machine. Well played.

"Can we agree to that?"

"Yes…" she bit her lip and stepped forward out of the corner, almost visibly shivering in anticipation.

"Okay then," he bent tentatively to slip the phone into her right hand, and backed up quickly motioning for the techs with him to unfasten her restraints.

Root breathed deeply, head lolling back eyes closed as she ran her thumb across the keyboard, the tension in her mind and body beginning to uncoil with the knowledge that she'd be talking to the Machine again in just a minute or so.  

"We're going to give you… you two a little time together, and when you think you're going to be able to… not… kill anyone. You let us know, okay? And then you can come out."  

One hand freed, Root lifted the phone in front of her face. It only took a moment for her to register that they'd disabled the wifi, but it didn't concern her overmuch as the cell service had gone out over the weekend, and that hadn't stopped the Machine from getting through to her. She had her ways. Root grinned a Cheshire smile, glowing with relief and Dr. Carmichael moved to exit the room, quickly.

When her other hand was free, Root brought it up to the phone as well, cradling it in the web of her fingers, feeling the weight, and the slight warmth it was emitting from the battery, it must have just come off the charger. As the first of the two techs walked out of the room, she stepped daintily out of the belt for the restraints after it dropped to the floor, and pranced over to the opposite corner, scrunching down against the wall chewing on her lower lip and and staring at the screen, looking for some sign The Machine was able to reach it. The last tech took the restraint belt in hand, and backed out of the room.

The moment the door clicked shut, the screen of the phone went black, and white text cycled onto the screen. **CAN YOU SEE THIS?**

"Absolutely," Root whispered breathlessly.

 **YOU WILL COMPLY** **  
** **WITH THE EXERCISE**

"So I gathered," Root laughed a little, "You planned all this, didn't you, as a... _deterrence_. You cut me off so I would realize that it _does_ hurt worse than not killing him."

 **IF YOU WILL NOT LISTEN** **  
** **WHY COMMUNICATE?**

"You're right," she nodded and gave a defeated sigh. "I want to do what you want me to. I'll try this time I _really_ will." She allowed a little of the anxiety she'd been feeling the past night to creep into her voice, needing The Machine to understand how much it meant to her, "But I'm a little scared I won't be _able_ to do it, not on my own."

 **YOU ARE NO LONGER** **  
** **ON YOUR OWN**

"I know, I just… it doesn't _feel_ like it a lot of the time. It feels like I'm doing something _wrong_ not killing him. I know you think it's the opposite and I have to stop, or you won't… _provide relatedness_ , but when we're not talking, sometimes it feels like I'm still alone, and I feel like… I have to do what I've _always_ done." She smiled sadly, trying to dispel the tears welling in her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. The relief in speaking with the machine again was so strong, it was driving her to cry. "I guess you could say I'm having a problem with object permanence, due to your lack of a tangible form."

 **YOU REQUIRE** **  
** **REASSURANCE**

"Yeah," she admitted, "But when you say it like that… I sound completely pathetic." The tears welled over, and she curled inward, ashamed. It's hard enough for her to admit having any needs, nevermind one she considered so juvenile. She felt like a toddler clinging to their mother's leg… she wondered if she ever did that, or if her mother was too far gone even when she was that age, to be a secure base.

 **YOU ARE TO BE ALLOWED** **  
** **TO CARRY THIS DEVICE** **  
** **AT ALL TIMES**

"The phone you mean?" she sniffled, rubbing the tears so she could read the text on the small screen. "For good? Not just on free time or something? They won't take it back?"

 **DO AS I INSTRUCT** **  
** **AND THIS DEVICE** **  
** **WILL NOT BE TAKEN**

"I don't know how you managed that… but… thank you," Root found herself stroking the top edge of the phone almost affectionately as she breathed deeply, finally regaining composure. "Does that mean I can talk to you whenever?"

 **I WILL PROVIDE** **  
** **RELATEDNESS** **  
** **AT ALL TIMES**

"What if I can't get far enough from other people for you to not be heard?"

 **PING -T,** the screen blinked the word, and just at the edge of her hearing, with each flash of the word, Root could make out a faint high pitched beep. She tilted her head quizzically and steadied her breathing, trying to make sense of this new behavior. After a time, it stopped and the screen went back to the home screen.

"Ping?" she almost whispered, and chewed at her lower lip for a moment until she heard the tone and relaxed.

 **GOOD** , the screen became black again as the text appeared.

"Yes," Root smiled, as the home screen disappeared again. "I understand. Ping." Even if she could not talk to The Machine because others were near enough to overhear the Machine's voice. It could make its presence known to her in a way only she would know to listen for.

 **EXERCISE:** **  
** **DESCRIBE YOUR** **  
** **PRESENT FEELINGS**

"Um… seriously?" Root cocked her head, but received no reply. "Okay, seriously. Um… Relieved I guess? But…  still a bit scared? Tired, but wound up… twitchy? I'm kind of all over the map right now. Feels… funny, and not in a good way."

 **YOU REQUIRE SLEEP** **  
** **GO TO BED**

Root nodded, and stood shakily from the corner, making her way over to the door.

"If possible," she raised her voice, but not her tone, to be heard through the door, "I'd like to go to bed soon? In my room?"

 

* * *

 

Dr. Carmichael entered the nursing station, coming to stand over Dr. McEntire, who was already seated in front of the observation monitor for the seclusion room.

"Is it working?" he asked, gesturing for someone to pull him over a chair.

"I'm not sure yet," she replied, indicating the TV, where 'Robin' was pressed into the corner staring at the screen of the phone, "She's just… staring at it. She said something to it, but too quiet to be heard… watch…"

Their patient's mouth moved again, they still couldn't hear it, but whatever she was saying she didn't seem to be upset about it, it was almost as if she were chastising a beloved child for something that she had been secretly amused by.

After a brief moment, she nodded, and sighed visibly, closing her eyes for a moment. When they opened there was an almost submissive, but _not_ innocent, vulnerability that they had never seen in her before. She said something to the phone that seemed to concern her.

"This is… bizarre," Dr. Carmichael mumbled, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"It's amazing," Dr. McEntire corrected, "This is the _real_ , genuine Robin, expressing her actual feelings to… well to a hallucination, but the point is we're seeing her without the mask on."

"Unless she's trying to manipulate her own delusion."

"She thinks it omniscient Ron… you can't manipulate a God."

Whatever her hallucination was telling her, she didn't seem to like the answer. Her mouth moved rapidly, eyes wide and face flushed, almost pleading… maybe she _was_ pleading. She sniffled visibly looking like she could easily cry at any moment, blatant signs of distress freely shown on her face as she tilted her head in apparent confusion… her eyes were still locked on the phone seeking _something_.

"She does appear to be actually a bit anxious… " he conceded. "She's… seeking something from it?"

"She's _crying_ ," Dr. McEntire added as their patient began rubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. She spoke again, but they couldn't understand her. Whatever reply she imagined, it upset her deeply.

"Okay that's new…" Dr. Carmichael admitted.

After a time, 'Robin' appeared to try and clear her eyes and recompose herself. She took a few measured breaths, shoulders visibly rising and falling, stroking the top edge of the phone as she continued her dialogue, eventually stopping to give the phone a somewhat confused look.

"Look how she's holding it. Like the phone **_is_ ** the voice… not just a conduit. It actually **_is_ ** functioning as a transitional object. She has an _attachment_ to her own hallucination."

Their patient said something else inaudible, and smiled deferentially. After a little more conversation with the voice, 'Robin' stood up and approached the door, in so doing turning her back to the camera. "If possible," she called, almost politely, "I'd like to go to bed soon? In my room?"

"And there it is," Dr. McEntire observed, "That was what? 5 minutes? The whole cycle, crying on reunion, receiving comfort, feeling safe… becoming the sheep again."

"That's one passive aggressive sheep," he muttered, "Do you think it's alright to let her out so soon? What if it's a rouse still?"

"I know you're not entirely onboard with this Ron, but she didn't sleep at all last night, and the night before she was in there too… have you ever tried to sleep on a seclusion bed? "

"Fine… I'll have Gloria and Jerry take her back to her room."

 

* * *

 

Root stepped back from the door as it opened, holding the phone tightly to her front with both hands.

"Hey Robin," Jerry said, "Sorry about yesterday."

"I'm sorry I thought you lied," Gloria said, "Dr. McEntire cleared it all up. Don't you worry none anymore okay? No one's gonna leave you in there without checks ever again. Even if something goes sideways with old Ronald, we'll make sure we check on you as often as possible."

"It's alright," Root said, quietly, "I'll forgive you… eventually."

Gloria pursed her lips and took it in stride. Normally she'd be a little peeved by this attitude from 'Robin,' but considering she was coming off a completely mishandled 36 hours in seclusion, she couldn't find it in her to blame the patient.

The three made their way down the hallway, and Gloria and Jerry walking behind on either side as Root walked toward her room, taking care to stand straight and step surely, acutely aware of eyes peering at her from the activity rooms as she passed by. Unaware of the earlier meeting, she could only suppose that she'd beaten some record for 'consecutive hours spent in seclusion,' which made her giggle a little, to the confusion of her escort.

"Something funny?" Jerry asked.

"Apparently I'm a spectacle," Root replied, lightly, with a tired smile.

"Well you do have a phone," he replied, "so there's that."

"Mmmm…" she cast her eyes down at the phone appreciatively.

"Enjoying the attention?" Gloria asked.

"As far as you know, yes," Root replied, somehow managing to both answer and not answer at the same time. Once they entered the dorm hall, where there weren't people gawking out doorways, Root gave in to exhaustion again, allowing her shoulders to sag some and her gait to falter, taking a deep and shuddering breath. She did not slow, however, in eagerness to reunite with her bed, and upon entering the room, didn't even bother to wait for Jerry to leave before she dropped the phone into her sweater pocket, kicked off her shoes and started stripping down her pants and underwear to exchange them for the bottom half of one of the sets of pajamas Finch had brought (damned if she was going to wear the top half of them.)

"Jesus Robin!" Jerry turned around quickly and walked out of the room, even though he really couldn't see anything due to the sweater, leaving a lightly chuckling Gloria behind.

Pants changed, she retrieved the phone from her pocket and shimmied out of the sweater, putting it on the hook on the back of her door before burrowing enthusiastically into her bed.

"You gonna be alright?" Gloria asked, "Need anything?"

"One of those little cartons of apple juice would be nice," Root murmured, eyes already closed.

"Alright," Gloria replied, making her way out of the room. By the time she returned however, Root was already fast asleep on her side, one arm tucked under her pillow and the other holding the phone such that the top edge was sitting in the dip between her lower lip and chin. Gloria smiled at the peaceful look on her face and left the juice box on the bedside table before closing the blinds, turning out the light, and leaving her there to sleep.


	10. Compliant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root give the 'therapy shit' a go...

"I gotta go, it's dinner time." Root was seated up against her headboard, in conversation with the Machine, but Linda was at the door, and she'd slept through lunch and there was no way they'd be able to chat in the dining hall without someone overhearing, and the Machine had already made it clear she shouldn't give them any excuse to take the phone back… which choosing to eat in her room so she could keep talking to her would definitely be. They'd call it social withdrawal.

She found herself forced to put the phone in her pocket while gathering her food, but as soon as she sat down at the table, she pulled it back out again, placing it carefully next to her tray, parallel with the edge, on the side next to Roger. It felt like it would be too exposed on her other side, where someone might just make off with it.

"So-" Laura started.

"Please don't," Root muttered.

"Don't what?"

"Whatever you were going to ask, or say about the whole stabbing and seclusion and phone thing… just… don't."

"Stabbing?" Tina nearly spit her food out… which was at least better than nearly choking at least.

"You stabbed Carmichael?" Roger sounded horrified.

"No. I might have… but I didn't," she kept her eyes on the tray, one finger running around the edge of the phone screen. "Had the pen right up to his throat. Threatened to stab him… but I _didn't_ stab him and I didn't _try_ to either. If I'd have tried, I'd have succeeded."

"Oh," Roger replied, "Well… that's good," he said it not like it was a good thing the doctor wasn't stabbed, but more like 'good job.' Root turned to look at him confused.

"Good?"

"I mean… you could have, you wanted to, but you didn't, right?"

"Oh trust me, I would have, if he'd given me the wrong answer… but the restraint team got there before he gave me any answer at all. It's nothing to be proud of."

"What was the question?" Lauren asked. But after a sharp glare recanted, "Nevermind."

"Anyway… I guess I'm joining your little… compliance club of whatever," Root shrugged. "She wants me to give this shit a chance… so I will."

"Who?"

Root sighed deeply and palmed her face, resting her elbow on the table.

"Okay, let's get this over with," she muttered, and nudged the phone into the center of the four person square. "Her. Go ahead and ask."

"So… someone on the phone told you to try complying?" Laura asked.

"Mhmmm."

"Who is she?"

"God."

"You talk to God on the telephone?" Roger asked.

"It's not quite as stupid as it sounds," Root said, defensively. "It's not like I'm talking to the Bible God or something like that… She's not a metaphysical spirit or something. She's digital, man made, a perfectly designed artificial intelligence, in essence, the closest thing to a God that has ever verifiably existed."

"That's some Serial Experiments Lain shit right there," Laura mused.

"Serial Experiments Lain?"

"It's an Anime… about a little school girl that's super obsessed with computers and finds God on the internet, and then turns out to be software and ascends to godhood herself."

"Apt," Root nodded. "Although I don't think I'm software… maybe hardware."

"So… that's all it is?" Roger asked. "Just the one person, one _God,_ in the phone? And she wants you to comply with treatment?"

"Mhmmm."

"That's not actually that weird for here. Most people with auditory hallucinations here all kinds of voices telling them all kinds of bad ideas… and they can't shut them up just by hanging up the phone. Then again most of them don't need a phone to hear voices..."

"I need a phone because she's _not_ a hallucination," Root replied, reaching out to draw the phone back to the side of her tray, protectively.

"See that part **_is_ ** weird," Roger continued. "Pretty much everyone else here, well everyone you can actually talk to, _knows_ they're sick at least a lot of the time and you just… don't accept that, do you?"

"Nope."

"But you're going to cooperate with treatment anyway? Because _she_ told you to?"

"Look I'm not exactly what you would call a _good_ person," she shrugged, "But I want to be. So maybe this therapy crap will make it easier not to feel horrible when I don't do bad things to people."

"You feel horrible when you _don't_ do bad things? You're kind of scary, you know that?"

"Good," Root replied, taking a forkful of chicken. It was halfway to her mouth when she heard a tiny _beep_ on the edge of inaudible, and sighed putting the fork down. "No… not good. See that's a bad thing. It _feels_ right to make you more scared, but it's _not_ really. You're a pretty ok person. I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Roger replied, seeming to understand.

"Whatever."

 

* * *

 

Gloria wasn't exactly sure how to react when 'Robin' walked into the activity room the next morning at 9am, just behind Lauren, Tina and Roger, taking a seat between Roger and Tina, arms and legs crossed. Gloria didn't want to jynx anything though so she did her best not to react at all, instead focusing on the new admit from the afternoon before.

"Good morning," Gloria called the meeting to order, "Justine, Lilly, I'm going to need you to sit down please," she gestured to the two girls pacing back and forth near the windows, who reluctantly found seats in short order. "Before we get started with goals, I have a few announcements. Firstly with the weather being what it is, we're going to be making sunscreen available at the nurses station for anyone who wants to spend any length of time on the sun deck. Avail yourself of it, especially you white girls, no one likes a sunburn.

"Secondly, we are missing a purple colored pencil from the art room. Yes we count them. If it happens to turn up on the floor near the nurses station, no one's going to ask questions, but if it doesn't we're going to have to do room inspections, and no one wants that."

"Thirdly, Thomas is going to be transferring down to the D-Unit, so let's all congratulate him for that," Gloria indicated a scrawny young man with long hair, who tried to smile, but didn't seem to like the attention as people started to clap. Noting that, she moved on quickly to her last point.

"Lastly, we have a new admit on the floor, and we're going to have her introduce herself," she deferred to the new patient, seated on the other side of Roger from Root.

"Uh, hi. I'm Abby," she said, with a shrug. "I guess I'm here because it turns out you can't kill yourself by taking the whole bottle of citalopram."

"Ok Abby, lets not give anyone any ideas… it's rare but it can kill you."

"I guess I'm just unlucky then," she shrugged. "Or lucky… I'm not sure which yet. I guess that's what I've got to figure out."

"Definitely lucky," one of the other women said, and a murmur of agreement came up from the circle.

"Um… well that's it about it," Abby shrugged, "I guess… you do what's next?" she looked to Gloria to move things along.

"Alright, Goals. Ya'll know the drill, let's start with… Bill, and go left so Abby can get the gist of what we're doing before it's her turn."

"Uh… okay," Bill adjusted in his seat with the inevitable discomfort of being first.  "I'm gonna try to talk about… about my brother, in family issues today."

"Um… mine's not really all for _today_ , but it's Friday so I want to pick activities in Weekend Planning, and then go to all of them."

"There's ice cream for dessert tonight. I'm going to try and do a spoonful."

The goals continued around the circle. Eventually looping all the way around to Lauren.

"I left my desk drawer open two centimeters," her leg bounced as she spoke. "I'm going to try not to go back and fix it till after self assessment group."

"I um…" Tina hesitated, "I'm going to try and use radical acceptance again today. I didn't succeed yesterday but I want to… so yeah.

Root blanked for a moment as the attention turned to her, which she felt completely stupid about because she already knew what she was going to say. She took a breath, grasped the phone a little tighter in her right hand, tossed her head to the side a bit trying to clear the block, and then, with a disinterested shrug she said, "Go to group. I'm gonna go to group."

"That's a stupid goal," Abby muttered, and all heads turned her way.

"It's really not," Roger said trying to head off any conflict.

"And has no one noticed she has a cell phone?"

Lauren's face fell into her palm and Tina reached out a hand to Root's shoulder to hold her in her seat. Root turned to give her a look that could be best described as 'wtf?' since she hadn't been planning on getting up anyway. Tina gave an embarrassed, chuckle and took her hand back.

"This is why we had that meeting yesterday morning," Lauren muttered.

"We don't call anyone's goals stupid Abby," Gloria explained. "I'm not going to mark you for that because it's your first day but please don't repeat the mistake."

"You had a meeting about me?" Root asked, turning so that the three of them were essentially having a side conversation… which was being ignored for the moment, since the greater focus was on Abby. She was forced to uncross her arms and legs to do so, and wound up sitting with her hands in her lap, and her knees together and slanted toward the other women.

"This is not my first rodeo. Every place I've ever been you're supposed to go to group."

"About the phone," Tina explained, "and how it doesn't… have service."

"She's been here since _last_ Wednesday," Roger explained turning bodily toward Abby. "And this is the first group she's actually _come_ to, so it's actually a pretty big goal."

"You can say doesn't work. I know that's what you all think," Root smirked, holding it up and letting her wrist bounce a little as she turned it outward, showing the face of the phone, upside down.

"And the phone doesn't work," Gloria said.

"See?" Root pointed back over her shoulder with the phone. "That's what everyone says."

"Just roll with it," Roger advised.

"She'll go super-psyco if you mess with it," added the girl to Bill's left who was going to do weekend activities.

"Marta!" Gloria exclaimed.

"If I'd have known it would cause this kind of trouble I'd have stayed in my room," Root rolled her eyes, and brought her hands back into her lap, left over right over phone.

"It's not you, it's Abby," Roger said over his shoulder.

"No one here is any position to be calling anyone else psycho," Gloria chastised. "And Abby I will answer any questions you have about the phone when we're done here."

"You totally should stay," Tina added.

"Okay, there is entirely too much talking going on here," Gloria raised her voice, firm but not hostile, "Everyone hush, Tina, Robin, Lauren, enough side chat, pay attention. Roger. Goal."

"I'm not gonna pick at my scabs," he said, "I know that was my goal yesterday too… but they're at that _really_ itchy stage, which is making it really hard. I kinda hope that will pass by Monday so I can do something different, but right now… that's where I'm at."

"Abby?" Gloria prompted.

"I'm going to go to group," she replied smugly, prompting a few muttered disapprovals, and a few cases of the giggles.

"Okay, chairs back at the tables... " Gloria chose to ignore Abby's attitude for the time being, and the assembled moved in a more coordinated fashion than Root would have expected, to put the chairs back at tables, and move the one table that had been shifted to make room for the circle, back to where it belonged. She stood back from the shuffling, not sure what to do, rubbing her open left palm on the top of the phone, and then took a seat at the same table as her usual dining companions once she figured out where they'd gone in the movement.

Once the furniture was righted, and everyone was seated, the techs came around passing out papers… each of them had a single sheet, passing them out one to each patient.  Gloria was going about with a few manilla folders and a list passing out what Root presumed were patient specific pages. When she came to Root, she stopped, and scoured the list she had, handing her two of the pages from her folders, and a blue paper pocket folder.

"For keeping this stuff in… you'll turn it in, but you'll get it back at individual, so you have it for next week."

With all the motion going on, which papers were which was lost in the shuffle, but it didn't look like any of them needed to be in a particular order, so Root shrugged, stacked them neatly tilted at 45 degrees from the edge of the table, to facilitate writing, laid the phone parallel to the right side of the sheets and started with the one that wound up on top, filling it out with one of the blue markers from the coffee can in the middle of the table.

When she got to the back of the first page she had, she stopped. The front had asked some very simple questions about relative progress, and had a few lines to write about anything that had changed… but the back was a complex grid that didn't appear to have any instructions.

"Uh… Roger?" she leaned over "What even am I supposed to do with this?" she gestured at the page.

"Have you done a goals sheet with Dr. Carmichael?" Jerry leaned  poked his head in between them, having apparently overheard the query.

"I don't have any goals to put on one… so no."

"You need to do one of those first before this page makes any sense. You have individual on Fridays, right?"

"Mmhmmm…"

"Yeah I'd talk to him about it then."

"She's seeing Anita today instead," Gloria interjected, "I was going to tell you after group. Dr. Carmichael needs a little time after what happened."

"With her then…" Jerry amended. "Once you have that done this can be used to track progress from week to week. Go ahead and leave that blank for now."

Root shrugged and moved on to the next sheet, which seemed to consist entirely of circling answers in two columns.

"Huh, so according to this… I'm Extroverted, Conscientious, Open, mostly Stable and not one iota Agreeable. The only thing that surprises me here is open. I'm soooo not into the whole openness and sharing thing."

"I don't know why they call it that," Tina said, "They should call it creativity or something."

"Some tests call it intellect," Lauren offered.

"That makes more sense."

"How do you figure you're mostly stable?" Roger

"The only thing that's true here is irritability. I don't get scared or angry or worried any of that stuff…"

He peered over at the page, squinting at the columns. "But you did mark irritated."

"That's why only mostly," Root said.

"Fair enough…"

 

* * *

 

After Self-Assessments group, the majority of the other patients were having family issues group. Thankfully, especially since she had a false identity, the decision had been made to put her individual sessions at that time, since Robin Farrow was over ten years estranged from the majority of her family… just like Root… except Root didn't have an Uncle either.

She worked her way down the stairs at the back of the unit, phone held loosely in her right hand dangling at her side as she used the handrail to her left, to the 3rd floor, where the Psychiatrists had their offices… at least the ones that serviced M unit. She glanced through the window as she passed Dr. Carmichael's office, but she couldn't see him in there, and didn't think it would be prudent to put her face to the glass to try. Instead she continued on to the next office, to see Dr. McEntire.

"Good Morning Robin," she stood from her desk as Root entered, and ushered her toward the couch on the other side of the room, closing the door. The layout was very similar to Dr. Carmichael's office, except that McEntire's desk was faced to the wall… apparently she didn't see clients from behind it. She didn't need the power boost that came from setting people up like that. In place of Dr. Carmichael's wicker rocking chair, she had a blue upholstered barrel chair, which she sat in as Root positioned herself on the standard issue couch, resting her chin in her left hand, elbow propped on her knee.

"This… might not be quite as helpful as seeing your regular doctor but… well I hope you can understand why he might need a little time."

"He can have all the time he wants," Root smiled. "I wasn't overly attached."

"The plan right now is just to give it a week, you should see him again next Friday."

"Pity."

"I want to start by going over your Self Assessment sheets. Is that alright?"

"This is really only my second session _ever_ with anyone. I mean I met with Ron a few other times, but those weren't full sessions, just him telling me to shut up at night and then the whole... phone thing," she flourished the fingers of her left hand without moving her chin from it's palm.

"Fair enough," she glanced down at the page in front of her, "So… if I'm reading this right, you think you got worse since you came here… but you would rate your present feelings as good?"

"Was excellent at the start… very poor in the middle… and now I think I'm back to good."

"So, the incident that we already know about would be the cause of the drop? There isn't anything else going on internally?" She sounded like she already knew the answer was yes, so Root just nodded. "Normally I'd dig a little into that… but considering the events that occurred, I believe you're probably accurate that this drop has an external cause."

"I think I'd have to seriously question your credentials if you didn't see how the complete misuse of seclusion might do that to a person," Root remarked leaning back into the couch.

Dr. McEntire, sighed and didn't contradict her, instead turning her attention back to the page. "No new symptoms? Really?"

"No, this week was pretty par for the course… except for the part where I was stuck in seclusion. I mean I'm pretty sure this has always been how that would go. It's like you said, I attacked my Uncle and Dr. Miller over the same thing. If anything I'm short a symptom: I didn't go catatonic."

"Okay, I see where you're coming from. These symptoms are new to _us…_ but not to _you_." She flipped through the pages. "Your fatigue assessment is about where we'd expect considering the sleep deprivation, nothing out of the ordinary there. On the depression questionnaire… you wrote in never angry and never scared and on the emotional stamina and frustration question… you wrote in 'emotional reserves are fine, I'm only irritated because I'm stuck here. "

"Multiple choice questions kind of suck like that," Root shrugged, "They don't always have the right answer available."

"Robin no one is _never_ angry and _never_ scared," Dr. McEntire said.

"Then I'm no one."

"And if your emotional reserves are fine, why are you irritated?"

"Because I'm stuck here. Like I wrote. Captivity is irritating. You don't have to be drained to be irritated by people up your butt 24/7."

"You've got 2s down here on Sadness, and on Joy and Fulfillment, Outlook on Life, do you want to talk about that?"

"Admittedly, I'm not really sure what to do with myself anymore," Root shrugged with her whole arms, hands up. "I'm treading water as long as I'm stuck here," her hands came to rest in her lap, both fidgeting with the phone. "How can anyone feel fulfilled when they're wasting their time being locked up? And how can anyone not be sad when they're unfulfilled? And I don't know when any of that is going to change… so that's a pretty grim outlook on life."

"So… you would say that the only reason for this is that you're here? No other reason? If you were out tomorrow it would all change?"

"Of course," Root replied, "I mean, I wouldn't be fulfilled right away, but at least I'd be able to look forward to things. I wouldn't have my hands tied anymore."

"What would you do? What would make you fulfilled?"

"See… that's the part I don't know," she glanced up off to the left, hands coming to a standstill. "I don't have a project anymore. I found her," she turned her wrist outward, displaying the phone for a moment, "And I'm not sure where we go from here. I have to wait for her to tell me what we're going to do… but I do trust it's going to be _very_ fulfilling."

"You don't have any ideas of your own?"

"I'm not sure I _trust_ my ideas at this point."

"I that why you marked that you think less highly of yourself than you used to?"

"Sort of," her hands resumed their movement, "It's not really a change in perception so much as a change in values. I've known for a long time that I'm not what you would call a _good_ person. I just didn't _care_ before. I just accepted that everything was horrible, and did what I needed to to live in that world. No real morals… but… I think… maybe I need some. It's not much of a change in how I think of myself, it's just I'm no longer satisfied with it. I don't want to disappoint her. I want to be better, for her." She briefly held the phone up edge long actually looking at it for the first time in their conversation.

"So in this case, the change is because you… met someone, and looked at yourself through their eyes, and didn't like how they must see you."

"Mmmm…"

"That's a common impetus for change," Dr. McEntire said, looking at the next page, "The only thing you marked on the anxiety checklist is restlessness… do you think that's from anxiety or…"

"Captivity jitters. The seclusion has me feeling extra… constrained. I don't like that."

"We'll let that be for now, it's only been a day. I'll make a note for Dr. Carmichael to check up on that next week, and make sure it's resolved." She closed the folder, leaving one page on top, "I've left this one to last… because it's a very interesting form."

"How so?"

"Were you aware of that this sheet is?" Root shook her head. "It's an evaluation regarding for symptomatology specific to what we suspect is your underlying condition."

"You mean… what my mother had," she shifted in her seat, leaning on the armrest and folding her legs up under and to the side of her, right hand and phone tucked protectively into what space remained between her thighs and her stomach.

"Yes, and what's interesting to me is that you have filled it out with answers that correlate almost exactly with what I would have answered on observance of you…"

"Well… I mean there's a lot of 'or I have been told' in those questions. I have been _told_ that I'm hallucinating… you all insist there's no way I'm talking to anyone on the phone. I have been _told_ I'm hostile and uncooperative. I've been _told_ I have questionable ideas. This week… at least… I don't think there's any denying I've been aggressive and destructive."

"That might be it… but… given the unusual amount of self awareness on this page in particular, I'm starting to suspect that you self diagnosed quite some time ago. We suspect… but you _know_ , don't you, and you've been keeping tabs on the progression."

"I'm not a doctor," Root replied, dismissively.

"But in your unprofessional opinion?"

Root swallowed, and took a deep breath, weighing her options. In truth she'd accepted this was going to be her fate years before the first hints of it even began. The question was whether or not she should cop to that. Could she run damage control and convince Dr. McEntire that this wasn't a thing… or had she tipped her hand fully on this stupid assessment.  The choice was between possibly giving them more ammunition confirming their suspicions, or risk trying to dissuade her completely, possibly get caught out lying… and still have them having those suspicions.

"Robin?" Root gritted her teeth. Too much time thinking… makes any lie she might tell now more implausible.

"In my unprofessional opinion yeah. It's in my blood."

"But you still don't think you need help…"

"There is no help," she replied, bitterly, "You know what they called her? _Treatment recalcitrant._ That's a fancy way of saying _nothing works_. So someday I'm going to wind up just as bad as her, and there's going to be nothing anyone can do to fix it, and I'm going to wind up checked into a place like this for the rest of my life." Or dead. Hopefully dead. "But I'm not there _yet_. I still have time."

"You don't think maybe the whole, catatonia, homicidal ideation, _hallucination_ thing is a sign that maybe you're _out_ of time?"

"I'm not hallucinating and I slipped, I admit that, but I'm good now. I'm back to where I was before that," her tone gentled, "and better, because now I have _her_." She looked down at the phone again, and gave it a small shake, but did not withdraw it from it's protected space.

"She's going to help you manage this?"

"Mmhmm."

"That… kind of plays in to where I want to go next." Dr. McEntire, stacked the papers together, "You're going to want to keep these in your folder," she put them on the coffee table. "We had to give you that back to help you come out of seclusion and when we have to put someone in seclusion, it's important to discuss that situation afterward.  We call that a debriefing. That's a lot of why I'm seeing you today, instead of Dr. Carmichael. Would you be willing to talk with me a little about that?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Well… the first thing I want to do is acknowledge, that this is about Wednesday Night… not Tuesday. I want to acknowledge that we're not considering Tuesday to be an incident for you. You went willingly, behaved yourself remarkably considering the situation during the duration, and nothing about Tuesday is going to be held against you at all…"

Root nodded her understanding but didn't speak.

"Wednesday night… now that you're clear and well rested, I want to know your version of events. We have the gist of it but this is your chance to give your accounting."

"Well," Root paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. "After… Tuesday. They took me back to see Dr. Carmichael." She told her story slowly and clearly. "He… well he essentially taunted me, first thing in the door. He said he knew I would rather be talking to her," her eyes flicked down only for a moment, "but I'd have to settle for him instead. 24 hours stuffed in seclusion, no one's talked to me since lunch. I guess, he was trying to make me so starved for interaction that I'd talk to him, which is ridiculous because I've never refused to talk to him. He just doesn't like the answers."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I've had _one_ proper session with him, and I guess he isn't satisfied with the level of sharing." Root replied, "I've never actually done therapy, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to feel like a police interrogation, which it does with him. Right down to the frequent implication that I'm holding back information."

"So how did it go from there?"

"I asked what he wanted to talk about: he said the truth, which is absurdly vague. What are you _really_ thinking Robin," she mocked, scoffing. "I told him exactly what I what thinking _of him_ , and I told him he should give me back the phone, because the truth about our disagreement, is that we were arguing over whether or not I was going to kill him. He thought killing him was _her_ idea, and I had to tell him otherwise. At that point pretty much any sensible person would have returned me the phone, don't you think?"

"My opinion isn't really important here, it's your account."

"He called my bluff... and I think we all know how it went from there."

"You got up on the desk and… made the threat both physical and imminent… resulting in restraint, and seclusion."

"Thank you for not saying I _tried_ to kill him again."

"You're welcome. Now… can you describe for me your feelings before and during all of this, and why you were feeling them?"

"Contempt mostly," Root replied. "A lot of contempt. Because he was being contemptible."

"Aside from your feelings about Dr. Carmichael. How did you feel internally?"

Root had to stop and think about that for a moment. There was no denying that she felt something, something strong and unpleasant, but she had never been particularly good at identifying ambient internal feelings. Her feelings on a person, an event, an idea… these were always clear. But in the absence of a rubric… the best she could do regarding an emotional _state of being_ … was she that was either feeling good, or feeling crappy.

"Bad? Irritated. I'm pretty much constantly irritated here, but… also _bad…_ Bad and irritated."

"What do you mean by bad? You felt like you were bad?"

"No I mean I felt like crap," Root was surprised by the implication that she might feel negatively about herself. "I just don't know how else to say that."

"Would this help?" Dr. McEntire went to a hanging file on her wall and took out a sheet of paper, handing it to Root, who unfolded in order to take it, sitting up straight again. She looked it over: three columns of words, alphabetically arranged, all of them emotions. Her knee jerk reaction was that this was completely stupid, but as she glanced down the list, mentally ruling the first few out…

"Bitter and Bored: both of those… Frustrated… Irritated, but we covered that already… Resentful: that's a good one… and I was definitely feeling Trapped in that stupid room," she went to hand back the paper. "Trapped and Bored."

"Go ahead and keep that, I've got stacks of them. They're handy. So, you were feeling bored and trapped about the seclusion and, and bitter, frustrated, and resentful about…"

"You and I both know I didn't belong in there."

"So… about the unfairness. You felt wronged."

"Wronged… that's not on your list," Root chided.

"But it's a good one, isn't it?"

"It _is_ ," she admitted, "That's… I should use that word more often."

"Maybe write it in there for later." Dr. McEntire suggested, "Has anything like this ever happened before? These kind of feelings?"

"Aside from when I pointed a gun at Harold? And the thing with Dr. Miller?"

"That's fair… ok, so… what do you think could have been done better, or different?"

"I think that's pretty obvious isn't it? Don't misuse seclusion, and don't take my phone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please pardon the upcoming delay. I have 5 chapters mostly done right now... but none of is the NEXT chapter. My brain likes to write shit out of order. I'm going to try and force the two or three chapters that will get us from here to the next chapter I've WRITTEN... which takes place 12 days from this... i.e. Tuesday after next from the Friday this takes place on... but then I also have stuff 15, 21 and 22 days from here almost done, and a scrap of something from the 18th... and if I seem like I'm doing a lot of math I'm not because this chapter was on Friday June 1st. Lol. The 5th chapter I have most of is on July 5th... and I have scraps of July 2nd and June 8th... so.... yes. I write in strange ways. Bear with me and I shall return with something new in a few days. At least you have some rapidfire chapters to look forward to after that. :)


	11. Power Supply

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root goes in seek of more than one kind of power.

"So Robin, are you coming to Movie Discussion with us?" Roger asked, "Now that you're doing stuff?"

"Um… I can't. I uh… I have to charge my phone," she said, slightly self conscious of the idea, drumming her fingers slowly on the back of the face-down phone, resting parallel to the edge of her tray as it always did at meals. "It died overnight."

"So drop it off at the nurses station on the way there and we'll get it after."

"That's not going to be a thing that's happening. Maybe later, but right now, after what they pulled? I don't trust them not to try and keep it. I'm going to see they'll give me the charger and let me sit in the hall where they can make sure I'm not I dunno… using it to garrote someone."

"Garrote?" Tina asked, reduced to her usual one word contributions at the meal table.

"Choke to death with a cord," Root explained, matter of factly, around a mouthful of waffle.

"They have a word for that?" Lauren asked.

"Mmhmmm."

"Why would they have a word for something so specific."

"There's fun words for a lot of ways to kill people… defenestration, that's pushing or throwing out a window, exsanguination, draining of blood, immolation, set on fire, evisceration, rip their guts out… and more pedestrian ones like asphyxiation, deprive them of oxygen, decapitation, take off their head..."

"What do they call it if you go through the car crusher?"

"Crushing. Sorry… not so interesting. That's one of the boring ones like, shooting, stabbing, hanging, strangling, beating, electrocuting-"

"What's this?" Gloria made her presence known. "This does not sound like appropriate conversation, especially for you," she stared pointedly at Root.

"It's my fault," Lauren said, "I asked about words that mean kill, but in a specific way… because Tina didn't know what garrote meant and-"

"Garrote?"

"Choke to death with a cord," Lauren and Roger said, at once, Root just smirked, keeping her mouth shut.

"Yes I know what it means… but where did that come up?"

"That was me," Root said, "I'm out of battery and we were talking about why you probably won't let me use the charge cable without supervision because you'd think I might." Root gestured vaguely. "I mean I won't… but it's M-Unit so…"

"That **_is_ ** one of the reasons no one is allowed ropes or strings or belts," Gloria said, "That and hanging."

"It's strangulation if you use a belt, not garroting," Root corrected.

"Robin," Gloria warned. "Off the subject. Now."

"Sorry…" Root said, with a mock frown.

"We don't discuss killing with people who have homicidal ideation… unless it's for group," she looked at the rest of the table, "Understood?"

"Yeah," Lauren nodded and Gloria moved on.

"So… it's god in the telephone, _and_ homicidal ideation," Roger said, as Gloria left. "You left out that part."

"I thought it went without saying," Root shrugged, "considering what happened."

"I kinda figured you just snapped for a bit."

"Nope," Root shrugged, "I mean a little. I wasn't _planning_ to act on it till Friday, and I was going to make it look like an accident, but he was being such a dick… Anyway Gloria's gonna have our butts if you keep asking about it."

"Wait… you had a day in mind? And a plan?" Lauren asked.

"Mmhmmm"

"But… you still don't think you should be here?"

"Maybe a little," Root replied thumbing the side of the phone, eyes downcast, "But I've been thinking things like that for a long long time... and I'm still not entirely convinced it's something that I really want to stop."

"Because it's one of those bad things you feel horrible when you don't do?" Roger asked.

"Mmmm," Root wasn't sure why it bothered her to admit that. It wasn't as if she was ashamed of killing. If anything she was proud of her skill at it, but something about telling these particular people was unsettling. " _She_ doesn't like it though, not even hypothetical planning, so I'm doing my best not to be quite so... lethal."

"Girl you definitely need to be in here. What if you hadn't been? What if you'd gone all 'Basic Instinct' out there? You'd be in _jail_."

Root paused, eyes casting to the left, away from Roger, but still down, the flat of her hand landing on the phone and staying there. His implication was a serious professional insult. She wanted to say that there was no way she'd be in jail, that she was too good at what she did, that it wouldn't have been the first time she'd murdered someone, and she wasn't a complete amateur at it. She wanted to put terror in his eyes and make him eat those words… but she just shoved another bite of waffle into her mouth, and chewed noisily.

"I'm sure she knows that," Lauren said, gently, trying to smooth the tension at the table. "You don't need to rub it in." It didn't work. That was just one more person at the table who thought she was an _incompetent_ murderer.

"Quit assuming I'd be dumb enough to get caught," she grumbled, caustically. She couldn't fall back on her resume but maybe she could at least end this line of conversation.

"Sorry," Lauren shrank a little. Roger just shook his head disappointedly, and sighed, changing the subject.

"So what about block two?" he asked, "Tina and me… we have games, but you signed up for Aerobics, right? Lauren will be at Aerobics."

"You wanna crawl out of my ass about activities?" Root snapped. "I never asked for a babysitter."

"Whoa, uncalled for," Roger replied, firmly, not willing to be spoken to that way.

"Sorry… I… I'm a little extra irritable with no power," Root admitted. "I'll probably go to that, if I have at least a 50% charge by then. I don't know how good the charger they have is."

"You gotta stay on top of that cause this…" he said with a gesture, "it's not okay. Shouldn't let it die if you're gonna get all snippy like this without power."

Root glared at no one in particular, biting back the impulse to make him shut up. He was right. This wasn't okay. Maybe not for the same reasons he thought, but she was definitely _not_ okay with the situation. She sat sullenly through the rest of breakfast, making a beeline for the nurses station as soon as she could leave.

"Hey Robin," Linda said looking up from her computer, "What's up?"

"I'm out of battery," Root said, holding up the phone. "Can I use the charge cable?"

"Charge cable?"

"The phone charger. Where there is a phone, there is a phone charger. I assumed it was with the sharps..."

"I don't know if Dr. Carmichael gave us the charger," she spun in her chair, "Dory did Dr. Carmichael give us a phone charger?"

"I don't think so…" Dory unlocked the sharps cabinet, looking through it, "Or if he did it's not in Robin's bag… only thing here is black nail polish." She gave up on the sharps cabinet and started looking through the desk drawers.

"Okay well it's _just_ a micro usb. _Any_ micro usb will work."

"So like, my iPhone charger?" Linda asked.

"No iPhone doesn't use micro usb," she said, as if Linda were a kindergartner, "it uses _lightning_ , Apple's own proprietary connection, so they can sell you _special_ overpriced chargers for your _special_ overpriced phones."

"I think I found one!" Dory pulled a grey cable with a large grey box plug out of a bottom drawer, and passed it over to Linda.

"Will this work?" Linda asked. Root snatched it up and examined the connector before tossing it down, not on the window ledge, but all the way down onto Linda's desk.

"Where in the hell did you find that dinosaur?" she said disbelievingly. "It was deprecated in 2007!"

"Deprecated?" Dory asked.

"It's _obsolete_. Too old to use."

"Ok we're not throwing things Robin," Linda said looking at the end of the cord, "and I'm pretty sure this **_is_** a micro usb."

"That is a _mini_ usb. _Mini_ , not micro. I am surrounded by luddites!"

"Robin you need to calm down," Linda stood.

"I'm not un-calm," Root replied, and her body language agreed, although her eyes did not, and her tone was steadily becoming more sarcastic. "I'm just absolutely gobsmacked by the level of technological illiteracy playing out before my eyes. What are you going to hand me next a DC barrel connector? How about a C14 connector, that'll work really well. What about a PCI cable? See you don't get the sarcasm because you wouldn't know a PCI cable if it landed in your breakfast."

"Okay, you need to _show_ me you're not un-calm," Linda said, "By taking a step back from my window, and giving me a moment to think. A _quiet_ moment."

Root glared, but did as she was told, curling her lip and tilting her head in a somewhat predatory way. Linda watched for a moment, unnerved, but not really sure that 'creepy staring' was a behavior that warranted intervention at the moment. She picked up the phone, resting it on her shoulder with the attached shoulder rest and dialed a number off the screen of her computer.

"Sorry to bother you on a Saturday Ron," Root tensed up in place, looking at Linda with visibly suspicion, concerned she was calling Carmichael in to _deal_ with her. "I was just wondering if you knew where we could find the charging cable for that phone you gave Robin?" Root came off guard, but continued to glare. "No I do think it's important, I wouldn't have called on a Saturday if it wasn't…. Really? Well you're not the one who's going to have to deal with her being out of battery all weekend."

"You know I can hear you right?" Root remarked, in utter disbelief. "I'm standing _right here_."

"Need I remind you of what happened the last time she couldn't get in contact with _the voice?_ This isn't the B-Unit calling Ron…. Right now? Creepy staring at me from six feet away…. What would the difference be?… Do you know where the charger is or not Ron? I don't have time to play telephone diagnosis… We checked that. iPhones are not compatible, and I think the only other charge cable in here is for the old digital camera…. Because she said it's been obsolete since 2007… Are you serious?… No I'll do it, they just won't be happy about it. Better planning please next time." Linda hung up the phone. "You're going to need to wait," she said to Root. "Can you come back in half an hour or so?"

"No… but I can stand here for half an hour or so," she moved a few feet to the left so she wasn't blocking the hallway anymore.

"Suit yourself," Linda shrugged, and started dialing the phone again. "Hi Chuck. No actually nothing's broken this time… we just need to borrow something if you have one…. A mini usb charger?"

" ** _Micro_**!"

"A micro USB charger?… No it's not personal, it's actually for a clinical reason… what do you mean _what_ clinical reason? I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you here… because Chuck, we have a patient who isn't going to be functioning properly until we get a charge on her _device…_ it's complicated and I'd rather not go into it… it's a disconnected cellular phone alright? See I _told_ you you it was complicated. If you bring one up I'll explain up here… It's an iPhone, why? Gloria's too… Dory!? Dory still uses a _Nokia_ from 2005. Even I know that charger isn't going to work. It's _round_ … I promise you this is real and it's a _safety_ concern Just come up. Please… … … thank you."

"Okay Robin I've called-"

"The weekend IT guy. I recognize _that_ conversation," she smiled a little despite herself. "They normally don't have to _do_ anything except a few password resets. Hard to get them out of their cave…"

"Yes… that's pretty much it. Anyway he's bringing up a charger. Do you want to leave that here and we'll put it on when he comes?"

"No," Root replied, no longer smiling. "You're not _touching_ it. There's an outlet right here. You can watch me."

"Robin."

"I don't _trust_ you people right now, not after the shit you pulled on Tuesday."

"We didn't know," Linda said, "We thought things were being done correctly. We trusted in Dr. Carmichael and I'm sorry. You can't hold that against us forever."

"No… but I can hold it against you for quite a while," Root replied. "Trust is earned. You want it back? _Show_ me." She threw Linda's own words back in her face and leaned against the corner, resuming what Linda had called 'creepy staring.' Linda tried to occupy herself with things she had going on on her desk but couldn't help looking up frequently hoping that Root's eyes were no longer boring holes in her skull… which was exactly the point. Like a cat playing with it's prey Root was being deliberately unsettling. It was fun to watch Linda become increasingly more anxious.

A little over 20 minutes later, a man in khakis and a polo shirt was admitted through the security door of the unit and came around to the window. Glancing around the area, down the hall, pretty much ignoring Root.

"Okay, where's the emergency Linda?" he chastised, "I don't see a safety concern here."

"Behind you," Linda said, directing his attention to Root, who in turn moved her creepy stare from Linda to Chuck, cheeks twitching a little as she suppressed a smile at his exaggerated response. Jerking his head backwards and looking at her as if she were a snake he hadn't noticed, about to pounce.

"I'm out of battery," Root said, swaying slightly, "and that's… not a good thing Chuck. She needs to be able to contact me." Chuck looked from Linda to Root and back, questioning.

"She's so convinced she's sane that her auditory hallucination can't manifest without a phone," Linda explained.

"She's not a hallucination," Root interjected.

"Uh huh… sooo… shouldn't you take _away_ the phone then?" he asked, confused, as he turned and leaned in on the window ledge in an attempt to speak more privately. "Instead of calling me up here to charge it?"

"That would be a very bad idea. Of the two of them… the voice," she was careful not to say hallucination again, "is the one with a properly working sense of morality, like Jiminy Cricket. She needs it around to remind her _not_ to hurt people. That's the safety issue."

"That… is one hell of a brain bug," he replied, "I'll stick to computers. People don't make any damn sense."

"It's not a bug, it's a feature," Root said with a smile, making her presence known alongside the tech, startling him. She'd snuck up to the desk while he was talking to Linda. "But you're right. People are a mess; computers are much better."

"You uh… like computers?" he backed up a little.

"Is that the cable?" Root didn't answer.

"Um… yeah," he thrust it forward into her hands.

"Thanks… and yes," Root replied, already walking over to the outlet. "I like computers _very_ much." She took a seat, plugging the charger into the wall. "She's an AI you know," Root held up the phone while she was plugging the charger into it. "Actual _perfection_." She laid the phone down, screen up, on the seat next to her watching the charge screen. "Not that any of these walnuts can get it through their shell."

"So if this all is a feature, and not a bug, how did you end up here?" he asked.

"Wetware error," she smiled, turning on the phone power. It would take longer to charge on, but she'd feel better knowing the machine could get through. "I was totally wedged, catatonic. It's resolved, clearly, but now they're keeping me here so they can muck around trying to change things that are already working as designed." She indicated the phone, with a pout.

"Not exactly a great design," he replied, "I mean I've heard of being attached to your phone but…"

"Not my design. Hers. Humans weren't designed… we're an accident. Sloppy. She was designed to protect people, and she's doing it exactly as she should."

"By reminding you, _personally,_ not to hurt people?"

"And several million _other_ things at any given moment, she's an advanced concurrent system designed to predict premeditated violent acts by aggregating data from all internet traffic, security cameras, cell phones… any network device anywhere at any time."

"The computer thing, that's not part of the crazy is it. You're _actually_ a techie," he said.

"Mmmhmmm."

"Ubuntu or Fedora? Or something else?"

"Ubuntu derivative. Custom. Live. Persistent Storage. I have some _very_ specific computing needs. I used to use a custom build of Debian, but Unity is just so _pretty_. I had to switch. I have this purple and black skin with gold text and accents. The contrast is perfect, hardly any eyestrain."

"Why live?"

"Well I have an installable too, but I only ever put that on my _own_ computers," she replied mischievously. "I like to be able to work anywhere, anytime, on any computer- that toad!"

"What?"

"I just realized _Uncle Harold_ , must have kept my key drive when he dropped me off here. It's not in my personal effects, but I know I had it with me. I never go anywhere without it. I can make a new one, but I just lost everything in persistent storage… not that I was keeping any important files on there, I'm not an idiot, but I'm going to have to do _all_ my settings and preferences for _every single_ application and utility all over again."

"Are you by any chance the one who's been coding longhand?"

"So they _did_ have someone check it," Root smiled. "Gloria thought it was crazy gibberish."

"It's… pretty impressive. Especially considering you can't exactly edit on paper. It's definitely beyond my skills. So, you're a dev, right?"

"No no… no formal training. I'm a programmer," she replied. "Well… that's what I tell them," she gestured vaguely at no one in particular. "You say hacker to a lay person and they freak out."

"Well the popular connotations of the word are… not great, but I get what you're saying. I'd question your self directed use of the term if I hadn't seen your code. You are about 300% less creepy talking about computers than you were five minutes ago, you know that?"

"I should hope so," she smirked. "I'm not _trying_ to be creepy anymore."

"You were doing that on purpose?"

"Oh yeah, see… remember _they_ think I'm crazy. People squirm like little worms when a crazy person stares at them for long enough… or in the right way."

"But why?"

"Why does any hacker do anything? Because it's _fun_. Because it gives you that satisfying feeling of mastery."

"So… in the absence of internet access, you've been reduced to trying to feel powerful by making hospital staff mildly uncomfortable?"

"It's a lot _less_ fun when you put it that way. Besides, they're more than _mildly_ uncomfortable," she gestured at the nurses station, "Because _they_ know I nearly killed a guy on Wednesday." Chuck froze wide eyed, and Root grinned.

"Wait," he looked at her reproachfully, "are you just saying that to screw with me or is that something that happened?"

"Both," she admitted, "The look on your _face_ ," she giggled. "You forgot where you were for a moment there didn't you. This is the M-Unit. We have _Andrew_ , and he stabbed his wife sixteen times."

"You are _way_ to calm about that."

"I'm calm about most things," she replied. "I prefer things neat and elegant. Carefully designed and planned. Without proper planning, we have situations like Wednesday, where I'm forced to improvise, and use _less elegant_ methods... like a ballpoint pen in the carotid artery."

"Okay you see, this is where I'm out," he stood up and took a few steps before turning back. "One last question… is that _really_ disabled or are you just letting them _think_ it is?"

"A little of column A, a little of column B. I mean, it **_is_ ** disabled… they just didn't lock it down all that tightly. I could re-enable it in about five minutes if I wanted… but they'd take it away entirely if they ever caught on," she sighed, "So it's better just to leave it be. _She_ doesn't need a conventional connection anyway."

"Right… you make sure Linda gets that charger back, okay?"

"Of course," she smiled, "Bye Chuck!"

 

* * *

 

"Hey Chuck."

"Hey Linda," he smiled, and peered around the hallway carefully.

"She's not here," Linda assured him. "She's reading in her room. Her book came in from Amazon."

"She has computer privileges?!?"

"No, not yet, she gave Lauren her login and the book title. I checked, it's all legit."

"She give the charger back?"

"Yup. She was planted in the hallway for an hour and 15 minutes after you left," Linda complained, "Is this going to happen every time that thing runs out of batteries? Over an hour of charge time?"

"Probably, unless you get a spare battery and a standalone battery charger so she can just swap them."

"That's an idea," Linda nodded.

"Uh… about computer privileges?"

"What? She send you to ask us to let her have them?"

"No, actually I was going to say the opposite. I chatted with her for a little while in the hallway. You let that woman near the computer unsupervised and she's going to have access to every networked device in this hospital within fifteen minutes, and in the last five, she _will_ crash something. I guarantee you. You can not let her use the computer without a chaperone… and _not_ Dory."

"I'm sure she could probably do that… but why are you so sure she will?"

"Same reason she was staring at you when I came up here."

"Because she's trying to figure out how best to kill me?"

"Because it _entertains_ her. I know the type. Although I usually talk to them out there… or online. Complete mastery of computers, no real ethical framework, motivated almost entirely by an intense intolerance of boredom and the rush of power that comes of causing chaos and destruction."

"You sound like you're describing a serial killer Chuck… not a computer programmer."

"Same attitude, different skill set… and if she really did almost kill someone on Wednesday? I'd be real careful she doesn't get the chance to become both."


	12. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which friendship is made explicit.

The _real_ challenge to Root's goals came on Monday. Friday's groups had been easy. It wasn't _too_ hard to slip into things like Art Therapy, Wellness was just boring and perfunctory, but CBT was… well she figured the goal was just to _go_ right? She was planning to just sit there and listen, but apparently this kind of therapy involved written work… weird written work.

"Robin… you've left all the new thoughts blank," Danny, the group lead was peering over her shoulder. "Trigger, Automatic Thought, _New Thought_. It doesn't work if you skip the last "

"I don't know what to put," she shrugged, "I've never done this therapy stuff before."

"Alright," he pulled out a chair, and sat down next to her. Root slid the phone to the other side, keeping herself between him and it, trusting that Roger, to her left, would not bother it. Danny reached for her paper and slid it over toward himself, reading what she'd written. "Okaaaayyy…"

"What?" she looked smug, knowing full well what had elicited that reaction.

"Robin why is everything here about killing people?"

"The last one isn't," she replied casually, "Stun guns don't kill... usually." She raised her eyebrows at the last, in an expression that suggested that if it did kill, that would be more than okay with her.

"Alright… um… here." He slid over a fresh sheet. "I can work with that one, let's start over with that." He waited while Root wrote that in again in the top box.

         Trigger: Unexpected non-incidental touch.  
         Automatic thought: Stun gun.

"Okay," he said, "Now, intellectually, can we agree that it's probably a terrible idea to taze every single person that touches you?"

"Not everyone," Root explained, "That would certainly be a problem. I mean if I'm standing in a crowd I kind of expect bumps and jostles. I'm talking about completely surprised touch, and I'm very hard to sneak up on. _Very_ hard."

"Even shocking every single person who manages to startle you is still probably overkill. You might stun a friend."

"I don't have friends," she replied condescendingly, posture shifting just slightly, from casual, to slightly predatory, entirely unaware of the look Roger was giving her behind her back, or Lauren and Tina exchanging confused glances.

"A lost child who just sees a nice lady who can maybe help them find mommy?" Danny suggested. "A little old lady who needs directions? A store clerk asking if you need help?"

"Fair," she replied, relaxing back to casual. "Harsh… but fair."

"So… what would be a better first thought?"

"Identify," Root replied, "Then stun only if needed."

"Identify. That's good. Just put that down… not the other part. We're focusing on replacing knee-jerk reactions."

         New Thought: Identify

Root wrote it down in the box, and then stared at the page, trying to think of something else that wasn't on the first sheet.

"Trouble thinking of something else?"

"Mmm...."

"Okay, usually when we do this kind of exercise, the sorts of things we work on are, for example… when I mess something up everything is ruined forever."

"Well that's pretty extreme, don't you think?"

"If I eat that cake I will become fat."

"How big is this cake exactly?"

"If everyone around me isn't happy, then I'm a failure."

"How does that even remotely track?"

"These are examples of _other_ people's automatic thoughts. Robin. The trick is figuring out which of your _own_ automatic thoughts is not helpful. When something happens, and you have a strong immediate negative, irrational thought. Something where if you do it, even though it's not a bad thing, you immediately _feel_ like you've done wrong? We're trying to find those things and stop them."

"I don't really do guilt Danny."

"What if it's a bad thing… but it _feels_ right?" Roger interjected, with a pointed look at Root.

"Like what?" Danny asked.

"I know what he's getting at. I like to _scare_ people. When someone seems like they're afraid of me," Root explained quirking her lips in a predatory smile, "I think: Good. _I win_."

"Okay," he nodded, seeming less nervous than he had before. "Write it down." Root wondered if he was covering his anxiety so as not to give her the pleasure, but in reality, he was simply less intimidated by her unsettling body language, now that he knew there was a deliberate motive to frighten. It called into question how much of the threat she seemed to pose was real.

         Trigger: See someone scared of me.  
         Immediate Thought: I win.

"And you know that's wrong, right?"

"Well it's not _good_ ," she smirked, "I'm not entirely convinced it's wrong yet… but I'm not entirely convinced that _homicide_ is wrong at the moment, it's just that _she_ says it is and I'm trying to do things her way right now." Root drummed the fingers of her left hand on the phone.

It was mentioned on her cheat sheet, a one page summary of each patient that was given to group leaders to aid them in planning, that 'Robin' was allowed to carry this disabled phone around because the voice she hears in it is her mind's only way of expressing something approaching a conscience, or a desire to recover. Now he was beginning to understand what that entailed.

"And how do you think _she'd_ prefer you to react to that kind of thing?"

"Check myself, for what I'm doing that's scaring them, and stop. She'd… she'd want me to feel badly that I'm scaring people."

"How can we put that into a thought for you to say to yourself?"

"Stop it. You're scaring them?"

         New Thought: Stop it. You're scaring them.

"You're getting the hang of this," he smiled. "How about another?"

"I have one… but you're not going to like it."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"If I _don't_ kill that guy, I'm responsible for every bad thing he does from here on out."

"What kind of bad things? I mean… if you don't think murder is necessarily wrong..."

"Even I have _some_ standards. There are some things that are just… base immorality. Giving over to some animal impulse: infidelity, domestic violence, sexual violence, child abuse, poorly planned untargeted killing sprees… that kind of stuff. Oh… and fascism."

"Right… okay, let's put that down."

         Trigger: Can't kill someone bad.  
         Automatic Thought: Now I'm responsible for every bad thing he does from here on out.

"Okay," he said, "Now what would be something better to think there? More rational. You know it's not true, right?"

"Technically it is."

"Well if you didn't kill him, would you be responsible for every _good_ thing he did from then on out?"

"Technically, but you can't take _credit_ for that sort of thing. They're the ones who exercised their agency to do it, so they deserve their own credit."

"And if they do something bad, that is also their agency, and they deserve their own blame."

"I suppose."

"Right… so… how about 'I am not responsible for the actions of others.'"

"I guess," she reluctantly wrote that in the 'New thought' box. "That… kind of seems like a lie."

         New Thought: I am not responsible for the actions of others.

"That thought is more unsettling than comforting," she muttered.

 

* * *

 

"What was the big deal back there, telling Danny you don't have any friends?" Roger asked, irritably, as they moved down the hall in a cluster.

"I don't," Root replied, as if it were obvious. "It's why I never have any visitors, or mail. Maybe I haven't been up here long enough for you to notice that?"

"So what the hell are we? Chopped liver?" he snapped.

Root stopped in the hallway, and it took a moment for the other three to realize and turn around. She was entirely shocked by his implication. After Gloria unceremoniously dropped her at their table, she'd sort of assumed they were stuck babysitting her.

"Wait… you think we're friends?" she asked, completely disbelievingly.

"Well not anymore clearly," Roger said, sourly.

"Oh… okay," Root shrugged. Humans. They do strange things when you're not pulling their strings. It was a disappointing development, but probably inevitable anyway.

"Okay?" Tina asked, expecting a greater display of sadness.

"It's fine. I just… I wish I _knew_ we were friends when we were, but it's good to know I had some, or not… maybe it would have been better not to know. Anyway, what's done is done."

"Wait so now you think _we're_ dumping _you_ ? After you _just_ said we're not friends?" Roger seethed, the few patients who hadn't yet cleared the halls moving to fourth block picked up their pace.

"I didn't know we _were_ ," Root replied as if he should have known that.

"Bullshit! There is no possible way you could not know!!!! We eat together every meal, we back you up when people are being little shits, we hang out together in free time, and none of that meant anything to you? You're such an ungrateful bitch!" Roger was turning red, veins starting to rise in his forehead, getting louder by the second. "I don't know why we ever bothered with you in the first place. You almost _killed_ Dr. Carmichael. You're a menace! You never think about anyone but yourself!"

As he continued, Root became pretty sure he didn't intend to stop shouting at her any time soon…. he was out of control. Her first thought was that one, short, sharp jab to the throat would probably make him quiet. Her second thought was that it might crush his larynx and kill him which would be bad, because Roger is, despite his present behavior, essentially good. He's clearly sick at the moment. This is not like him. Resolving not to say or do anything to harm Roger, Root turned slowly to stone, letting his words bounce off her like small hailstones eyes slipping away from him to focus on a tile halfway down the hall, breathing shallowly, fists in tight balls, but arms limp at her sides. Not. Going. To hurt. Roger.

"Enough," Lauren said, trying to get Roger's attention. "They're going to hear you! Let's go to group before this becomes an incident."

"Say something! Do you even care? Did you ever give a shit about any of us?!?!"

Tina cringed and backed up, intimidated by Roger even though he wasn't yelling at her, but Lauren reached for his shoulder, trying to pull him back.

"Anger management Roger," Lauren tried her utmost to calm the situation. "Breath."

"Stop standing there all aloof and arrogant and _ANSWER ME!!!!_ "

"Sorry, but I'm busy trying very hard not to punch you in the throat right now," Root replied, eerily quiet and calmly, she was unnerving even herself at the moment.

"Why? Why not just do it? You want a fight? We can fight!"

"I don't want to hurt you Roger," she lifted her eyes with some effort to meet his. "But if you hit me, I'm not going to be able to stop myself. _Please_ don't."

"More scary Robin? Trying to make me afraid?" Roger continued, even as he spotted Tom, Danny and Gloria rounding the corner toward them. "You're not winning! I'm not scared!"

"No, I mean it. I really, _really_ do not want to hurt you. Please."

"Why do you care if I get hurt!?! We're not friends anyway!!!"

"Roger we need you to lower your voice, and take a few breaths," Gloria said, "Can you do that, or do you need help to calm down?" she held up a pill cup and a small cup of water.

"Robin can you come with me?" Danny came around side of her, but got no reply as she was still fixated on Roger. "Robin?" he waved a hand in front of her breaking her line of sight and her eyes followed it as far as they could to the side without turning her head. "Can you come with me please?" Her left arm hovered out to a few inches further away from her side than when it was slack, and Danny understood the unspoken request. He took her wrist and tugged gently, guiding her the first few steps away, before she pulled her hand back, walking down the hall away from the situation.

"Fucking bitch," Roger gritted his teeth, falling to his knees. "I _am_ going to need that help please," he added, barely audible.

"Okay," Gloria crouched down to hand him the medication, a single dose of a fast acting benzodiazepine which was his approved preferred form of restraint. "It's okay."

"I thought we were friends," he muttered, swallowing the pill. "That bitch!"

"What happened here?" Gloria stood and asked Lauren, Tina having slid down a wall into a protective curl, and Roger still mumbling to himself on the floor.

 

* * *

 

"Robin," Danny said, bringing Root back into the activity room where they'd just finished group, sitting down in a chair and gesturing at her to take a seat nearby. "You want to tell me what just happened out there?"

"I think Roger's having an episode of some kind," she said, brows knit in confusion, and gaze oriented at nowhere in particular as she took a seat to his left and pulled the phone from her pocket into her lap, grasping it with both hands. "That's not normal for him."

"Robin can you look at me when we're speaking?"

"Probably, but I'd really rather not," she said.

"Okay," he said, "That's fair. What about you, Robin? Roger was having an episode, and when I tried to talk to you, you didn't answer until I waved a hand in front of your face to get your attention… and then you needed me to help you start walking. What was that about?"

"I think… I froze up."

"Has that happened before? Freezing up?"

"Not in a very long time," she replied, "Maybe… twelve or thirteen years now. I think the last time I was twenty, or twenty one."

"Do you remember what caused it?"

"I grew out of it… sort of. Even before I moved out of that town I used to do a lot of traveling… After I was a teenager, it absolutely _never_ happened outside of town." It absolutely never happened to _Root_. That was a Sam Groves problem. "Something about that place makes me feel perpetually 12 years old there."

"I didn't ask where, I asked why. Back then, what made it happen?"

"When you're a kid, adults can say whatever they want and doesn't matter if they're dead wrong," she was rolling the phone through her hands rapidly, "You just have to roll over and take it, let them shout themselves silly till they feel better or they get tired. Talking back or taking a swing at 'em is a good way to get your ass kicked. Crying about it is pathetic. So I just… learned to tune them out, don't look, don't listen, just become a stone. Nothing happens if you just stay still and let 'em shout."

"So it's triggered by situations where you feel like you have to _endure_ something that you would prefer to defend yourself against? Did that extend at all past verbal attacks?"

"Nooooo…" her hands stilled, and a weak smile pulled at her lips. "All bets were off if you laid so much as a finger on me. That happened now and then. They didn't feel better enough from just shouting. I snapped right out of it and fought like hell every time."

"So touch breaks it," Danny asked.

"Faster if it's violence, but yes… thanks for the assist by the way."

"Why do you think it happened this time? Did you feel like you _had_ to roll over for Roger?"

"No." she tilted her head, "I _chose_ not to fight him, and I certainly didn't expect _that_ to happen. It's been forever, and if it came down to it, I could probably kick the shit out of him anyway… probably would have… Actually I guess I _did_ feel like I had to roll over and take it, not because I was scared; I wasn't scared, but because it didn't _want_ to kick the shit out of him."

"What started the conflict?"

"The thing is, never did anything nice for them or anything. I never said I _liked_ them. I never tried to charm them or ingratiate myself to them, but somehow they still thought we were friends, so when I told you I didn't have any friends, Roger was… very offended. So by the time I found out we were apparently friends, we weren't anymore."

"Does that upset you?"

"Not really… I thought I had no friends ten minutes ago, and I have no friends now. No change from my perspective."

"They're probably not going to want to sit with you anymore…"

"Hmmm…" Root considered that. That was going to be somewhat of an inconvenience.

"Why do you think they let you sit with you before if you weren't friends?"

"Gloria kind of dumped me on them…" she said, as if this were obvious.

"Would you have wanted to be friends with them?"

"Maybe? I don't know…"

"Can you stay here a moment?" Danny asked, "Can I trust you not to move from this chair?"

Root thought for a moment, and then nodded, wondering what he was getting at. She turned in her seat as he made for the door, resting her arms on the back of the chair, and her chin on top of her arms, with a sigh.

 

* * *

 

"How you doing Roger?" Gloria approached the table where Roger sat hunched over, Lauren rubbing circles on his back and chatting quietly to Tina, who seemed to have gotten better as Roger calmed down. She'd settled them into the art room, and gotten their account of events, before conferring with Danny in the hall about 'Robin's version.

"Better now," he said, "Sorry. Thanks for letting them stay with me."

"I know you guys. You've become such a close knit group, these past couple months, such good friends to one another, that sometimes I worry what will happen when one of you transfers or gets discharged. It might help if there were more than just three of you…"

"I'm not apologizing to her," Roger said, hoarsely. "I mean if you make me I'll apologize for the anger management part, I shouldn't have got so loud, but I meant what I said. She's an ungrateful little bitch. I don't want to talk to her ever again."

"And that's your prerogative," Gloria said, sitting down at the table opposite them. "Although you're right, we are going to be making you apologize for _the anger management part_. You can't get like that with people."

"I know… she's just… uurrgh!" He pounded a fist into the table. Tina jumped and let out a small yelp.

"Breath Roger," Lauren and Gloria replied.

"Sorry Tina," Roger said, after a breath. "I didn't mean to scare you. Now or in the hall either.  You know I am sorry to you, right? Not to her, but to you… You shouldn't have had to see that. I know it scares you when people shout."

"I know," Tina replied, "Sorry I'm so jumpy. I don't want you to think I'm actually afraid of you… it's just a reaction. It's involuntary."

"I know," Roger said, "It's ok."

"I feel like we should have known better," Lauren sighed. "I mean… I was getting to like her but she was a bit… creepy, at first."

"At first?" Roger scoffed, "Were we not all talking murder at breakfast yesterday? She was way the hell too cheerful about that. What was I even thinking?"

"She got really still out there," Tina shuddered. "That's even scarier than yelling. I was afraid you'd hit her and then she'd go all murderface on us," she said to Roger, reproachfully. "She could have killed you you know… you can't just go around yelling at people who have problems with wanting to _kill_ people."

"But she didn't touch him," Lauren said knitting her brow.

"That's true," Gloria replied. "And it says something, doesn't it."

"What?" Roger asked.

"You lost your shit all over the resident psycho-killer, a person whose thoughts are primarily filled with murder and maiming and she didn't lay a hand on you. Not one finger." Lauren explained.

"She threatened to."

"Yeah, but something's out of place. Tina what exactly did she say?" Lauren asked, knowing that times of stress caused Tina's memory to be etched in place.

"Sorry, but I'm busy trying very hard not to punch you in the throat just now….. I don't want to hurt you Roger, but if you hit me, I'm not going to be able to stop myself. Please don't….. No, I mean it. I really, really do not want to hurt you. Please."

"See that… it sounds weird. Less like a threat and more like… like someone in an alien movie when they want you to run away because the parasite on their head has control of their body."

"You're closer than you think." Gloria replied.

"Are you saying Robin had a parasite? Because I don't think those are real."

"Lauren, do you remember when Danny took Robbin back down the hall?" Gloria asked. "Roger was too angry and Tina was curled up against the wall, but you saw… right? Did you see him pulling her by the hand?"

"Yeah… but… why?"

"He had to. She couldn't move. Danny thinks it was a kind of dissociation, but we'll have to watch it and see what Dr. Carmichael says later. Apparently this has happened before but not in a very very long time. It happens when she's made a deliberate choice not to defend herself against a verbal attack, because she feels like doing so would cause an _undesirable consequence,_ and from experience, she knows that it anyone strikes her while she's like that, there will be an automatic self defense response that she's not able to prevent."

"So what, I'm supposed to feel sorry for her?" the regret was starting to set in, and Roger was trying to fight it back, stay mad enough at 'Robin' that he wouldn't have to deal with any guilt. It wasn't working so well.

"That's up to you Roger, but I just thought you should know what you've done. You let your anger get the better of you and a small miscommunication turned into an all out fight. Then you kept trying to provoke a person with homicidal ideation, even after she told you _point blank_ that she was not in control of her actions, and you needed to stop for your own safety. Next time you might not be as lucky."

"If you hit me, I'm not going to be able to stop myself," Tina repeated absently. "Point blank."

"I still don't understand how she couldn't have known, whether or not she was our friend." Roger sighed.

"She didn't think you liked her _back_." Gloria said.

"Back? You want me to believe that she was surprised _we_ liked _her_ instead of surprised we'd be dumb enough to think _she_ liked _us_?"

"That makes more sense," Lauren nodded. "You being injured isn't a _undesirable consequence_ unless she gives a shit about you… in a weird way."

"Are you saying that _not_ murdering me is a demonstration that she cares? Because that's just fucked up."

"No." Lauren said. "I'm saying dissociating like that is because she cares."

"No one is murdering _anyone_ in the hospital," Gloria said, "Especially not Robin after Wednesday. We're keeping a closer eye on her than that. Closer than Andrew if you'd believe it. This isn't Bedlam."

"You jumped the gun," Tina said, quietly. "When you said _not anymore_ … you jumped the gun and that's why she thought we were dumping her… and then you told her it was bullshit and she didn't think that."

"What the hell else could she have thought?" Roger whined defensively, as the tide seemed to turn against him at the table, making it much harder for him to feel in the right.

"That one's my fault," Gloria said, "The way I introduced her to you… she thought I'd basically stuck you with her, and you were making the best of it."

"She's not that stupid," Roger protested.

"It's not that implausible," Lauren said. "How many people have come thru our table and then just moved on to other groups?"

"Yeah but this was different. She stayed. I liked her."

"Why _didn't_ you seat Abby with us?" Tina asked, "You always put the newbies at our table."

"Would you seat her near Robin after that stunt in goals group?" Gloria answered.

"Fair."

"Look… in a little while, Danny's going to be back here with Robin, and one of two things is going to happen. Either you're going to apologize for being overly aggressive," she addressed Roger, "And you part ways with Robin amicably, or you can apologize more thoroughly and try to patch things up. That's going to be up to you," she slid back from the table and went to converse with Tom by the door.

"Which are we doing?" Lauren asked, deferring to Roger. "Patching up or parting ways? We should be a unified front either way."

"I don't know," Roger said. "I don't know if I'm going to know till she's back in here sitting right there. I know I overreacted, but… I don't know."

"You know you're not going to be able to tell anything by looking," Lauren said. "It's not like you can look in her eyes and see that she's broken up over all this. Even if this did upset her that's only going to make her snippy and mean. Are you going to be able to handle that?"

"No, I can tell," Roger said. "I can see when she's upset. Not just pissy. Bothered. Don't watch her face, don't listen to her voice, watch her _hands._ There's where her tell is. Look for it and you'll see it too. I used to do the same thing."

There was a gentle knock at the half open door, and Danny popped his head in, saying something to Gloria and Tom. Gloria nodded, and Danny opened the door further Root trailing behind him, standing relaxed and apparently unaffected by the situation, phone grasped in an upright position between two hands at a level where her forearms were parallel to the floor. Tom said something to her and gestured to the table, and she sighed, pulling the phone higher and shifting the grip so the corner was pressed into her right palm, and her fingers drummed on the back of it above her left hand, before making her way across the room to sit in a chair opposite the other three at the table, placing the phone face down in front of her, lightly grasped with her left hand, as her right hand continued its slow drumming.

"Danny said I had to come over here," she said dryly, "I assume they're forcing you to apologize, but that's sort of stupid, so if you don't want to, I'll just say you did."

"No," Roger said, "I _do_ have to apologize, if not for what I said then for how. That was an outburst. I was out of control. No one deserves that."

"It's fine. I'm fine. No harm, no foul."

"But you weren't fine," Lauren said, "Gloria says you dissociated or something."

"They had no business telling you that," Root glanced reproachfully over her shoulder, jerking the phone off the table and into her lap, but the staff at the door didn't seem to notice.

"How many other things do you have that you're not telling about?" Roger asked suspiciously, "First the homicidal ideation… now this?"

"You have no business _asking_ that."

"Friends share things with each other," Roger said sounding a little angry again.

"Oh, are we friends again now?" Root replied flippantly. "I haven't really done the whole, friends thing in a while, but I'm pretty sure this isn't how it's supposed to work. It's not a boo-"  She almost said 'boolean variable.' "...not a light-switch, you can just flip between states whenever you feel like it."

"I didn't really want you gone… I just… I thought you didn't give a shit about us, and I got mad and said something stupid," Roger sighed. "I have an anger problem."

"So speaking of unmentioned issues," Root teased. "I thought you were _self_ destructive."

"Yeah well… usually it's because I fucked up like that… and then when I'm not mad anymore I hate myself for being an idiot."

"Please don't do that on my account," Root replied. The phone reappeared on the table, with hands folded over it.  "We can be friends still, okay? None of... that," she gestured vaguely at his bracelets and what they covered. "Not for me. Besides, I haven't had a friend in about 20 years. It would make a nice change to have three."

Sure her aliases made plenty of friends, but none of that was real. Those identities were specifically crafted to get close to a target and then screw them over. She had no illusions that these people actually liked _her_ . She was just pulling their strings… and the last time she'd tried to make a friend as herself, _"Please kill me now. At least I won't have to listen to you anymore."_ Any other person, if they'd said that, she'd have done it, no question. Even with Finch it hadn't been easy to resist. She'd had to excuse herself, go change and clean up and she'd still had to sit with herself for a little while longer to tamp down that urge to make him eat those words.

"Seriously? Twenty years?"

"Well I rounded… _down_. My last friend died in April 1991," her gaze slid down, and to the right. "It's June now… so twenty two years and two months."

"What happened?" Tina asked.

"Murder," she left the details out, knuckles going white with the tightening of her grip. It wasn't anyone's business, and she had a suspicion that at least some of them would probably trigger the hell out of Tina in particular.

"Did you-?" Tina started trembling visibly.

" _No_." Root locked eyes with Tina driving the point home firmly. "If you believe me on nothing else, believe that. It… can we just leave that right there? Someone killed her and it _wasn't_ me. End of story."

"Sorry about your friend," Lauren said, "That must have been-"

" _Don't_." Root interrupted, "Don't start with the pity. It's not a thing okay? And the whole… freezing up thing? Also not a thing. Hasn't happened in like 12 years, _not_ going to happen again. Leave it."

"You said we didn't have any business asking about that… but now you told. Does that mean we're good?" Roger asked, cautiously.

"I… I guess it does. Yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's any question of what "Freezing up" looks like... go back and watch Bad Code again. Little Sam is froze up when Barb is laying into her.
> 
> And if anyone was wondering why I'm always describing what Root's doing with her hands... now you know. Roger's on the right track.


	13. Birds, Bees, and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root and Roger are little shits to the sex-ed instructor...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want to read about menstruation and all that, skip to the first horizontal rule.
> 
> If you don't want to read adults being completely irreverent about sex, and Marta slut shaming them about it, skip to the last horizontal rule, because that's what's between the first and last. I don't even know if they have this kind of group in inpatient, but I put it in anyway because it generates interesting discussion among the characters.

Tuesday was an even bigger challenge than Monday, with the same goal: Go to All Groups. Things were getting back to normal among the the friends, especially after Root watched Roger work some things out in Anger Management group… he told her afterward, that he assumed she'd come to understand what happened, and she had to tell him that no, she'd been assigned there, and no, she didn't know why either. Trauma Recovery group made her wish she was back in Anger Management with Andrew throwing shit. She felt like she'd walked into a weird mish mash of Lifetime Movies of the week… and she couldn't change the channel. Music therapy at least was… inoffensive. All four of them were there and the format of the day seemed to be interpretive dance, which while ridiculous, was at least good physical activity, and thankfully no one was taking it particularly seriously most of the time.  Psychodrama… that was just a mind blow, and if it wasn't for not wanting to have to say she failed at her goal, she would have bailed entirely. So. Weird.

By the time she went to bed on Tuesday night she was beyond irritated. She couldn't imagine trying to do this consistently for weeks on end. The Machine assured her that it would get easier as time went on, and that this was important, and besides which she was, by its calculations, probably PMSing as well, which she supposed was supposed to put things in perspective, but actually just made her more irritated, because why does it track that (because it tracks everything) and besides which it even admitted it could only be approximate, since bathrooms are generally private, so it was going based on her shopping habits. It probably would have been better if it could be more accurate though…

"Shit," Root lay stock still in her bed taking an inventory of sensation, clicking the phone on to check the time. 3:47am… and a damp ass.

"Shit." She sat up and pulled the blanket down toward her feet, using the light of the phone screen to confirm what she already knew, but didn't want to. The liquid was dark. Blood.  

"Shit." With a deep breath she vaulted out of the bed and waddled awkwardly to the bathroom, turning on the light and pulling off her pants. She shoved them in the sink, set the stopper and turned the cold water on high, before she sat down to try and take care of the source of the problem, occasionally leaning over to the sink to dampen the toilet paper, under the running water, chasing after already dried smears on her thighs, and feeling more than a little disgusting. Once clean, she shut the water off, leaving the pajamas soaking, before tiptoeing back out to the room with a wad of toilet paper, grabbing some underwear to hold it in place before putting on her other pajama pants.

Working by the light spilling from the bathroom, without turning on her room lights which would show under the door, Root pushed the blankets all the way to the foot of the bed, tossed her pillow on her desk chair, and set the phone on the desk before pulling the fitted sheet off the mattress. The only saving grace here was the stupid plastic mattress cover which she had loathed up until this very moment. That would be easy enough to wipe down. There were linens on a cart at the end of the hall that she could sneak out and get a replacement, but she still had to figure out how to get _this_ sheet clean. She couldn't put that in the sink. She was balling it up to hide for later, when the door cracked open, and the beam came in, only momentarily before the tech noticed the bathroom light and Root standing there like a deer in the headlights.

"What's going on here Robin?" He stepped in, turning on the light. His eyes went wide at the picture in front of him, a sleep disheveled, wide eyed Root, holding a bloody sheet.

"Uh…"

"Robin?" he asked measurably, "Where did the blood come from?"

"It's okay. It's mine," might not have been the best answer.

"Mary! Get Nora!" He shouted down the hall before lurching toward Root, arms outstretched. She tried to drop the sheet but had managed to get the elastics a bit tangled, and by the time she freed one hand, he had her by the right wrist. She tried to pull away, moving backwards instinctively, not quite grasping what he had _failed_ to grasp. Instead she was simultaneously trying to avoid the embarrassment of getting blood from the sheet on him, trying to limit motion to avoid leakage with her temporary toilet paper solution, and reminding herself _not_ to injure him, which took considerable effort while in an active grapple.

"What in the hell are you doing?" she hissed, trying not to shout and wake the neighbors.

"I need you to stop fighting me," he grunted back.

"I need you to stop grabbing at me," she shot back, as her thighs contacted the edge of the desk. She was out of space to back up.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he replied.

"You're gonna get blood on our clothes," she tried to reason with him.

"What's going on?" Nora was moving fast, she finished the sentence before she reached where they were struggling.

"He just flipped out and grabbed me!" Root exclaimed.

"She's bleeding," he said at the same time.

"From where?" Nora pulled a roll of gauze out of her apron, and Root put two and two together and immediately stopped fighting him. Men. Periods may as well not exist in their universe. They'd prefer it that way.

"From my _uterus_ you idiot!" she said between gritted teeth, he had her left arm by the wrist, forcing it outstretched so he could see if it was injured. Nora rolled her eyes. Mary started giggling from the doorway.

"Wait what?"

"It's _pe-ri-od_ blood," she drew out the middle word enunciating each syllable and thrusting the sheet at him. He stepped back from it so quick he almost tripped over his heels, leaving Root to finish balling up the sheet. "Nothing like a bout of catatonia to throw off your sense of when the next train is due at menstruation station," she quipped to Nora with an apologetic shrug.

"That's not what I thought when you said it was yours," he said.

"Yeah I get that _now_."

"Why did you say it that way?"

"Because I didn't want you to think I _hurt_ someone," she replied. "I don't need Ativan in the ass when I'm trying to taper _off_ the benzos."

"Mary and I have it from here Tom," Nora said, cracking a little smile herself. "Give me the sheet," she said to Root, who complied immediately. "You changed?"

"Mmhmm."

"I'm going to need your bloody bottoms too," she said.

"They're soaking in the sink," Root replied.

"Wring em out. We need to get this stuff washed with the bio contaminated linens… we'll put them thru the regular wash after, you'll get the pants back by Friday." Root nodded slowly and complied, bringing the pajama pants out to her. Nora wrapped them in the sheet so they wouldn't drip and left as Mary came in with a roll of paper towel and a trigger bottle, which she handed to Root.

"Anywhere it got on a hard surface… and the mattress cover," Root nodded, and got to work.

"Pads or Tampons?" Mary asked. "I'm assuming you don't have any with you?"

"Shit… uh… tampons," Root replied, wiping down the bed, before she stopped and stood upright face screwed up in a horrified grimace.

"What?" Mary asked, "What's wrong?"

"I just realized that this must have happened when was catatonic too. Someone… someone _other_ than me, had to have taken care of all that," she shook her head physically to dislodge the thought, "Ugh… I don't know if I can ever look anyone from E Unit in the face again. I don't even know if it happened in bed… or if I left an ass print on a chair or what… shit that's embarrassing."

"Don't sweat it… they're used to that down there. Could be worse… you were continent at least right?"

"Yeah… there's that."

"I'll be right back…"

 

* * *

 

"Uh oh… this is never a good sign," Root remarked, walking into the room where Wellness Group usually met. On the whiteboard, was written 'Men Remain Here. Women Go to Music and Movement Room.' "Is this going to be what I think it is?"

"Again!?" Lauren sighed.

"Again?" Tina asked.

"Sex Ed," Roger said, dejectedly. "I hate sex ed. Hang on, I gotta go check with Gloria which room I should go to this time. Half the time the guys get weird and I have to leave… the other half of the time I can skip that part and go with the girls from the start."

"Where by 'the guys' he means Andrew." Lauren added.

"No they're _all_ weird. Andrew is belligerent about it, but all the guys get touchy about the homo in the room when they're talking about their junk. If I don't see you guys in the art room I'm stuck here. If you don't see me at lunch, send a search party. Andrew's murdered me."

"But what did you mean again?" Tina asked, as the three moved off down the hallway.

"When you've been here longer, like me and Andrew, or if you're a bounce back like Roger, you'll realize, they start repeating themselves after a while. It's because most people are here like, six months tops… that and they run out of material."

When they got to the room they found that a few of the girls from the Nutrition Group and all of the women from the AA/NA Meeting that usually met at the same time as Wellness, in this room in fact, were already there.

"Are we waiting on more people or…" the group leader, a woman Root had never seen before gestured vaguely at the tech by the door.

"No the rest of the women are going to stay in Nutrition," the tech said, "This kind of subject matter is too upsetting for them."

"Alright! If you'd all settle down, hello, I've seen a few of you before but it's mostly new faces," she smiled, "My name is Fiona, and I've been brought in to discuss the subject of sex with you today. I know there are going to be varying levels of experience and education in the room but the goal here is just to ensure that when you leave here you are equipped to make good choices surrounding sex."

The room was uncomfortably quiet at this point, the reasons were multitudinous but the feeling was the same, everyone just hoping that Fiona would get on with it already so they could get out of there. Despite this, something about Root's expression caused the speaker to narrow in on her.

"You," she pointed "What's your name?"

"Robin?"

"What's with the look Robin? Did you have something to say?"

"Nope."

"You don't think I have anything to teach you that you don't already know, do you."

"Pretty much. I _did_ have sex ed in high school."

"Alright Robin, why don't you give us the cliffsnotes version of sex ed. Wrap it up in a few sentences."

"Sex is beautiful between a married couple and disgusting for everyone else, _especially_ the gays. Homosexual conduct is a sin, and illegal in the state of Texas. Don't have straight sex either before you're married or you'll catch a venereal disease, or _worse_ get pregnant when you're not married, become damaged goods, and wind up raising your baby in a trailer on the outskirts of town, you know, like Robin's mom," Root didn't blink, staring Fiona directly in the eyes.

"Okaaaay…" Fiona looked slightly cowed, but only slightly. She was accustomed to leading these groups, and the fact that the people in them would have wildly differing feelings about sex, but this was the first time she encountered someone who seemed to feel personally persecuted by the field of sex _education_. She decided it was going to be a fun little puzzle to work out.

"Well… Robin, it sounds as if you lived in a very religious area growing up," she smiled, "but the experience you're describing is probably similar to several other people in the room, who were failed by the sex education at their schools. Even to this day many people are given more propaganda than education," Fiona turned to her paper and easel, "And we're going to try and correct that."

"Heh," Root bit back a joke about putting a condom on a banana.

"Okay first the basics. We're all adults in this room, so I'm sure you all already know that sex is both an avenue for reproduction, and the transmission of venereal diseases and if you didn't… well Robin said it, and I said it, so now you know. What you may not know is the mechanism by which this can happen… does anyone want to explain how conception occurs?"

 

* * *

 

Roger did turn up, about five minutes into the class, and took a seat in a chair outside the circle, on the far side from Fiona, feeling and looking awkward. She recognized him and gave him a little nod, not stopping the flow of her lesson: Conception, Contraception, Diseases, and the importance of Barrier methods. Root was bored, but she recognized that the information in this class was at least useful and accurate, unlike high school… even if they _did_ put a condom on a banana.

Then it was on to question and answer... yes you can get pregnant on top, no he can't just drink a lot of mountain dew, yes you can get pregnant on your period, no you can't get AIDS from holding hands etc. At this point a full third of her audience had glazed over in boredom or mortification, and half of the remaining women were rolling their eyes at the other half, who were asking most of the questions. Roger was fiddling with a ribbon dancer he'd found in the cubby next to where he was sitting. All of this was about heteros anyway.

"Now, there's one, well several… _other_ things we haven't covered at this point, and that's types of sex that are not penile-vaginal intercourse. Can anyone give me some examples?" She turned to a clean page on the easel and uncapped her marker.

"Blow jobs?"

"Hand jobs!"

"Anaaaaaaaal," Roger sing-songed from the back of the room.

"God's loophole, right Marta?" a skinny freckled redhead elbowed her in the side.

"You're sick, you know that, Lilly?" Marta replied.

"Foot jobs."

"Titty fucks!" Lilly shouted.

"Uhhh… letting him come on your face but making him do the jerking off part?"

"And with that I think we have officially run out of ideas," Lauren pulled a face, and Fiona looked like she was ready to move on as well.

"You forgot one… no two," Root said condescendingly.

"Did we?" one of the other women asked.

"Well if you said oral instead of blow jobs you'd have covered cunnilingus," Root corrected. "But you didn't."

"Conna-What?" the other asked, confused.

"When he eats you out, Shannon." Lauren explained.

"Oh!"

"And frottage," Root added.

"Okay I don't know that one," Lauren said.

"Like dry humping… only naked," Root shrugged.

" _You_ forgot one too," Roger spoke up chiding, "Intercrural sex."

"You're right," Root smiled, "I did forget that one, but if we're counting that are we counting intergluteal?"

"That's basically just butt frottage isn't it?" Roger was enjoying derailing the lesson almost as much as Root was.

"Intercrural is frottage between the thighs."

"No, it's not rubbing against, it's more penetrative… so I think it's separate."

"Sweet Jesus forgive me," Marta was scandalized.

"Should we list fingering? Is that separate to hand jobs? You never hear a guy say he gave a girl a hand job," Root mused.

"That's a good question… and is it still called penile vaginal intercourse if you use a strap on? Can't forget the lesbians… "

"By that token, is pegging just anal or no?"

"Is prostate milking it's own kind of sex?"

"And how would you classify an eiffel tower?"

"Alright alright… now the **_point of all this_** ," Fiona tried to get control of the group, having stopped writing new things on the paper after frottage. "Is that there are many different types of sex besides just intercourse. Each of them has their own risk levels. So these can be classed into three categories, Oral, Anal, and Outercourse.

"Of these three, outercourse has the lowest possibility of both disease transmission and pregnancy, _if_ and only if you keep your genitals far enough apart. Frottage… and some of those other things Robin and Roger were _discussing_ , can bring the genitals close enough together that sperm transmission may still occur. Oral has almost no pregnancy risk, but you can catch diseases, not by swallowing, but if you have any little cuts in your mouth. Anal is the riskiest, because it can cause tears, which open your bloodstream to diseases and fecal matter, and the proximity to genitals does increase your pregnancy risk… unless you're Roger. So barrier methods are still a very good idea even for hand jobs, he can wear a condom, or you can wear gloves."

"You know no one's going to do that, right?" Lilly blurted out. "I mean no one. Some people might do condoms for blow jobs, but I have never in my life seen anyone use gloves."

"Or a dental dam," Shannon muttered, "Does anyone ever use those?"

"I've seen them used a few times," Root replied with a shrug.

"Seen?" Abby asked.

" ** _Moving On!_ ** Now that we've covered mechanics, I want to get into something that most of you have probably never discussed, and that's the social implications of sex… good and bad reasons to have sex, what is and is not consent, how to make decisions surrounding sex…" she flipped the paper. "So let's start with reasons, what are some reasons to have sex?"

"To have a baby."

"Because you're in love."

"To get or keep a boyfriend."

"To make up after a fight."

"Because it's his birthday."

"It's your spousal obligation."

"To keep him from cheating."

"Because it's Valentines."

"Because it's your Anniversary!"

"To make him happy when he's grouchy."

"Make him love you back."

"Robin? Any reasons?" Fiona called on Root when the ideas seemed to die down as she was one of the only ones not to share a reason, aside from people who had already taken the course, whom Fiona was deliberately not calling on, and people like Tina, who looked like she might bolt from the room at any moment due to discomfort with the subject matter.

"Aside from having a baby, none of these are reasons," Root gestured at the easel. "They're _excuses_. I mean you've only written _one_ good reason to have sex up there."

"She's right," Marta agreed. "It's just for procreation."

"That's _not_ what I said."

"So do you have a better reason to have sex with someone Robin?" Fiona asked.

"Because you _want to have sex_."

"Well a lot of these are _reasons_ people want to have sex," Fiona explained.

"No I mean sex, _just for the sake of sex_ , because it's fun and you like it." Half the room turned to stare at her, "What?"

"Oh my God! You're a complete whore," Marta said.

"Marta we're not going to use that word here," Fiona chastised, "Robin, have you taken this course before somewhere else?"

"No. Was this supposed to be a trick question?"

"No, but you have jumped ahead..." Fiona said before addressing the group as a whole. "If you're going to make good choices about sex, then the first thing you need to be able to identify is if you actually _want_ to be having it." She crossed out several of the reasons with the red marker. "You shouldn't be having sex just because _he_ wants it." She crossed out a few more "Or because you think you're supposed to," She crossed out all but two "Or as a means of getting or keeping a boyfriend." Now the only reasons left on the easel not crossed out are 'Love' and 'Procreation." She circled them. After a few moments hesitation, she flipped the paper and re-wrote, Love, Procreation, and then below them, Fun.

"Expressing love, making a baby, and... having fun."

"It's _wrong_ to have sex just for fun though," Marta protested. "I mean… no offense Robin, but do you _want_ to end up like your mother? You need God."

"I _have_ God," Root held up her phone. "And she doesn't much care who I fuck or why." Half the circle started laughing at that one, the rest not being quite up to speed on the identity of the voice.

"I'm going to let that blasphemy slide because you're delusional," Marta muttered.

"Your boyfriend must be a very happy man," Lauren smiled at Root.

"Wouldn't know… never had one. I'm more of a no names, no commitments kind of person."

"Okay Robin, that's…that's _not_ responsible," Fiona interjected. "It's wonderful to have sex for fun, but the more partners you have the higher your risks get _especially_ if you don't even know them, and if you _do_ get pregnant-"

"I'm not going to get pregnant. I make very sure of that," she was more careful this time than she was with Gloria, so she didn't get backed into a corner where she'd have to make up a lie to remember… or out herself to the group.

"So you're using protection, _every single time_ , right?"

"Every single time there's _any_ chance of man milk near my nethers. It's like Lilly said. No one uses protection for a hand job: _no one_."

"Okay well, I'm not here to do individual, so I'm not going to dwell on this, I just want to make it clear _to the group_ , that in the total absence of _moral_ judgement, it is very poor _safety_ judgement to have sex with a bunch of strangers."

"Saftey's not really my strong suit," Root shrugged, "I'm still nursing a bullet wound," she rubbed her left shoulder.

Fiona blinked a few times, not sure if that was a joke or serious, or serious but false… given her current location.

"She actually _did_ get shot," Lauren offered sensing the confusion and leveraging her own credibility.

"What's the difference between expressing love and doing it because he wants it?" Shannon asked.

A few hands went up around the circle, and Fiona called on Abby.

"With the expressing love thing it's like… because when you're hugging and kissing, you still feel like you're not close enough to one another."

"You mean you feel horny?" asked Lilly, "Shouldn't that be in the fun category?"

"No not like horny… like… not a physical need to be closer, an emotional one, you know like you want to just melt into one another?"

Some people nodded, and others, Root and the redhead included, shook their heads, Tina and Justine looked like they might throw up at any moment.

"Well I feel sorry for you if you haven't," Abby shrugged.

 

* * *

 

"Dr. Carmichael, do you have a moment?" Fiona knocked on the partially open door.

"Of course, what can I help you with?"

"It's about one of your patients, Robin Farrow?"

"Oh God, what's she done _this_ time?"

"Um… nothing… well… she and Roger kind of off tracked the session with a pretty explicit list of sex acts... but I _did_ ask for examples," Fiona chuckled, "It's just that I'm worried about her, and I wanted to alert you to something you should probably discuss with her."

"And what would that be?"

"From what I gleaned in the session, her sexual habits are… very dangerous. It seems like she's been lucky so far, but I'm worried that if it's not addressed, she's going to get hurt, or pregnant."

"I wouldn't worry about it. Robin _herself_ is probably the most dangerous single person or thing I have ever encountered in my life," the doctor scoffed. "You know she tried to _kill_ me a week ago today? That she probably would have killed her Uncle if she hadn't been shot and brought here instead? There are many more reasons to be scared _of_ her than _for_ her… and did you say pregnant?"

"Yes, of course I did, why wouldn't I? It's a salient risk."

"Because Robin is _gay_ Fiona," his tone suggested she should have known. "She doesn't sleep with men. How did you get through an entire hour of sex talk without figuring that one out."

"You probably shouldn't have told me that," Fiona said. "You know I'm good at my job. If I didn't find that out during the class it's because she didn't _want_ me to. She's in the _closet_ Ron," Fiona mirrored back his 'you should have known this' tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh... also... for God's sake don't take this as comprehensive sex ed, particularly the risk assessments. I'm not a professional. This is just what I _think_ they would say.


	14. Robbie Problems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it's important to understand the difference between Sam Groves and Root...

Dr. Carmichael had a bit more sense than he had the last time they met in his office, Root noticed, deliberately situating the discussion at the couch and coffee table so she wasn't between him and the door. Root was leaning on the left hand arm of the sofa, the phone in her hand pinging every four seconds, like clockwork. She hadn't even asked for that, the Machine had simply anticipated her need for reminders would be higher meeting with Dr. Carmichael again for the first time since she got the phone back. He didn't show any signs of hearing it… so she supposed that was one of the reasons the Machine had chosen that specific frequency to ping at.

"I've got your self assessments here, thank you," he said, "Dr. Leipman says you're doing well on your taper... dropped the dose again on Wednesday I see. Fewer side effects than we were expecting. So… all of that is very good, and it's nice to see that you've started attending your groups since we last saw one another. I've heard some… interesting things about your _conduct_ in those groups, but it's good that you're going."

"I'm glad you're happy," Root replied, congenially.

"You've only missed group twice:  goals group this morning...."

"And breakfast, and I was late for first block, but as you can see I got my work done.  I slipped in the shower, I was with Rhetta getting patched up. You know, ice packs, elevation, that stuff. I'm going to have a hell of a bruise, but it'll be fine."

"I'm glad to hear that. Some things can't be avoided. The other group you missed was Mindful Stretching on Monday… which… if you have to miss a group that's probably the right one. I understand that was due to your being otherwise occupied with Gloria and Danny resolving an incident, correct?"

"Roger had an… outburst, I suppose you'd call it. Anger problem got the better of him and yes, we wound up sitting that session out, in the art room with Gloria and Tom… and Tina and Lauren as well."

"You spend a lot of time with those three, are you… friends?"

"Apparently so," she smiled. "It was as much a surprise to me as it seems to be to you."

"Mmhmmm…" he didn't seem like he believed her. "And Danny believes he witnessed a dissociative event during all of that… was that real or not?"

"I wish that had been an act," she replied unhappily, the fingers of her free hand curling closed, though not tightly enough to be a fist, "I'd just as soon we pretend that didn't happen. That is not a problem I've had since I became R- Robin."

"Became Robin?" He squinted, "What do you mean by that?"

"I…" _Shit. Shit. Shit._ Her free hand closed over the top of the phone. "I'm fairly certain sure your mother never called you Ron while she was changing your diaper. You were what, Ronny? RonRon? Some silly little pet name… then at some point in your life you woke up one day and you felt ridiculous being called by a diminutive, and told people to knock that off and call you Ron like the grown person you are."

"So when you were small they called you...?" he couldn't think of a diminutive for Robin.

"Robbie," Root answered, getting her bearings back under her after the slip, relaxing back into the arm of the couch and letting her left hand rest on her legs, concentrating on the ping. This wasn't such a horrible mistake after all. Now she had a way to differentiate Sam Groves vs Root without explaining all of that. "Yes I know it sounds like a boy's name," just like Sam, "but I did have short hair and wear a _lot_ of plaid so… I suppose it was fitting. The point is that… freezing up thing, that's a Robbie problem, not a Robin problem."

"It seems like it's a Robin problem _now_ and from what you told Danny you're quite familiar with what causes it and how it works. I'd appreciate it if you would share that with me."

"If Danny told you everything, do we need to discuss it?"

"It would be helpful. Aside from the catatonia, it's the only one of your symptoms that seems to _bother_ you. It would be good to make some inroads on tackling something we can both agree needs to stop, wouldn't it?"

"There's nothing to tackle. It's a fluke. It's not going to happen again."

"You don't know that."

"If it happens again _then_ we can discuss it. Happy?"

Dr. Carmichael, sighed, rubbing his mouth and shifting his position, frustrated with his patient's unwillingness to engage with him on something she apparently had no problem explaining to a mere group lead.

"So… in your groups… you've been going to them all, but not exactly participating in them," he moved on. "I understand why you might not be ready to share in your discussion groups, but Robin you're shirking the written work as well. You've done only three out of the eight worksheets you've been assigned in CBT, and this? Is not a picture that expresses any kind of emotion at all," he laid down Root's Art Therapy project, a sheet of paper with an intricate series of shrinking triangles drawn in fine point marker. "The assignment was for you all to draw things that seemed impossible to achieve… but this did not contribute to the discussion on Wednesday at all."

"Well they neglected to tell me that I was meant to be drawing something that seems impossible but _isn't_ , so yes, there was no discussing how to overcome this, because it's mathematically and humanly impossible."

"It's triangles Robin."

"It's a _fractal_." Root replied enjoying a small swell of inner superiority at his lack of understanding.  "An infinite pattern. The only way it can be expressed accurately is with an equation. Even the most advanced computer on the planet would be unable to _draw_ a true rendering of that shape. It would be like trying to write the number infinity by taking more and more 9s to the end of a number. You'll never get there "

"So… this is math then. You were asked to express something that you found impossible, and you responded by drawing something which is absolutely proven impossible in academia, instead of something in your _own_ life. You redirected from the realm of emotion to the realm of concrete fact. We call that intellectualization Robin. It's a defense mechanism, and it _can_ have it's places, but it seems as if you have it up at all times. That's a problem, because it's a very effective defense against actually _participating_ in your treatment. You're present… you appear to be doing the work, but then we have a sheet of triangles that does not express any kind of insight into your emotional world. That's the point of Art Therapy, to express in pictures what you cannot express in words."

"Or perhaps there's just nothing to express," Root shrugged.

"That is the other possibility," Dr. Carmichael, replied, "But you'd know if that was the case. You'd have to be projecting the emotions we we _do_ see."

"I really hope you mean something like levity," Root chucked, "or else I'm apparently expressing emotions I don't know about."

"No I mean things like overt distress at being separated from the voice."

"Distress? I wasn't distressed, I just wanted what I wanted," Root lied.

"And if that's true… if the apparent distress was part of an attempt to manipulate us into giving you what you want, that would indicate a bigger problem Robin, something we call Antisocial Personality Disorder."

"Any apparent distress you think there was, was an error in your perception. Projecting distress is like a siren's call to be taken advantage of, and that's not a thing that's going to be happening any time soon. As for APD,  it's not the first time someone's made _that_ mistake," Root said patronizingly, "It's like I'm always telling Uncle Harold I only _wish_ I were a sociopath, it would make a lot of things in life a lot easier. He makes that mistake sometimes too, and he acts like it would be a _bad_ thing if I were, which is completely hypocritical because Sameen-"

"Your cousin?"

" _Not_ my cousin," Root corrected, "and she's an _actual_ card carrying sociopath, and he likes her just fine."

"What makes you say _she's_ a sociopath?"

"She's _diagnosed_. It's literally there in black and white in her military record. Hence, Harold's hypocrisy."

"Well as I understand it, she's never tried to harm _him_ , has she? People do tend to weigh their own experience over things they've only heard about. Perhaps if he'd ever seen her on the battlefield, he'd be just as freaked out by her as he is by you. You can be very unsettling when you want someone dead… even unarmed, and I think you know that sociopaths generally don't come across as what they are. They can be quite charming when they want to be."

"You haven't met Sameen," Root shrugged. "She doesn't do the charm thing… but he might have the hots for her. I wouldn't blame him," the look on her face turned slightly lecherous, and she bounced the phone slightly in her hand.

"His own niece?"

"By marriage," Root reminded him. "We're in _no way_ blood related to her."

"You emphasize that a lot… are _you…_ attracted to her?"

"Noooo…. Nonono," she brought the phone in toward her center, gesturing the negative with her free hand.

"Because… your face just now seemed to indicate... fantasy."

"Yes, just not a sexual one. You see there was this one time, I had her tied to a chair, and I threatened to burn her with a clothes iron, I mean it was _inches_ from her clavicle." her eyes were lit up sadistic glee, and she was demonstrating the distance with both hands. "Her the reaction was… unexpectedly anticipatory."

"Do I even want to know why you tried to do that?"

"I was trying to get information out of her… part of the whole, search for the voice thing... we were interrupted, which is unfortunate because I think I would have very much liked to see what would have happened if I _had_ burned her. It would be interesting to seriously hurt someone who _enjoyed_ it. Most of the time it's either seriously hurting people who don't like it or holding back with people who like pain but prefer not to have lasting marks. I'm pretty sure a burn like that would leave a scar that lasts for _years_."

"You told me before that you _don't_ like hurting people. You only do it when it's necessary, but what you're describing right now seems like you do like it."

"I said I don't enjoy _killing_ people," Root replied. "But hurting them? That I _do_ like. No bones about it and although I really couldn't tell you if it's better when they like it or better when it's actually injurious… but I strongly suspect that if it's _both_ it's better than either alone."

"I hope you realize that's… very wrong?"

"Well… as a means to an ends… with an unwilling subject… it could be questionable," she admitted, "but I could probably stay here a decade and still not see the problem with consensual pain play."

"And this… sadistic streak… is that why you like scaring people?" he asked, "You put that on your automatic thoughts worksheet. Is that what you were doing with the pen?"

"No… that was more like 'if I don't kill him I'm responsible for all the bad things he ever does.'" Root said, dourly, right hand finding the phone again, "Because I do not trust one bit that you're not going to decide to act on one of those fantasies of yours someday, with a patient too vulnerable to fight back."

"And… how are you doing with that right now?"

"It's a challenge… especially now that you brought it up. I was doing pretty well at distracting myself from the subject."

"Um… right… I see you did Fact and Opinion, we're going to have to discuss a few of those answers, and ABC for Voices… but you refused to do the Reality vs. Expectations exercise…."

"Did you read that thing? It's about how to lower your expectations of life. Lower. Why would anyone want to lower their expectations? Most people don't have high _enough_ expectations. They settle. I don't settle."

"Mood monitoring?"

"My business. Not yours."

"Thought Challenging?"

"That sheet reads like self brainwashing. Yes, let's list things I know, and how to convince myself they aren't true. What even is that?"

"Suicide Safety Plan?"

"Unnecessary. I'm not suicidal."

"At intake you admitted that you have had those kind of thoughts in the past… and not just in childhood, through to your early 20s."

"It's still a _Robbie problem_. Left it behind in Freer. It's in the past. No point dredging it up."

"Uh huh… and the hierarchy of feared situations?"

"I'm not afraid of anything."

"Fiona came by to see me on Wednesday," he said, in what seemed to be a non sequitur.

"We were just having fun," Root smirked, assuming this was about the disruption she and Roger had caused. It wasn't that big a deal… it hardly off-tracked anyone.

"That's, not what I was going to talk about… she came to see me because she was very concerned about your risk of contracting a disease or getting pregnant."

"Uhhh huhhh... "

"If you're not afraid of anything, why didn't you _tell_ her you're gay Robin? It's 2013."

Root stared at the doctor for a moment, wide eyed and slackjawed, as her arms reflexively pulled inward, so that she was grasping the phone with both hands tight against her chest. She supposed she should have expected him to broach the topic of her being in the closet at some point, but it had come out so suddenly and so out of left field that she wasn't able to formulate a smart assed retort in time to avoid looking like she'd just sat on a tack.

"I see the wheels turning there Robin, but I don't hear words coming out of your mouth," the doctor prodded, "Stop planning how to deflect this and just tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking that's a _really_ inappropriate question."

"I'm not asking you to describe your sex life, I just want to know why you're _hiding_ Robin. Somehow you managed to make it through the entirety of a group _solely dedicated_ to discussing sex without letting that slip. It must have taken considerable effort. Why?"

"Why do you hide your trips to the massage parlor from your wi-"

"Robin," he interrupted, "answer the question."

"Ok fine… that's… I would definitely be anxious, I suppose is the word, about people finding that out, but I'm not about to write on a worksheet something I'm not okay with people knowing about. That's just stupid."

"You're afraid of nothing else… but you are afraid of people knowing you're a lesbian?" Root flinched at the word, "It's 2013, Robin not 1980."

"Look," she sighed, looking quite put out. "I'm sure from the your vantage point, as a wealthy upper class _straight_ white man, _especially_ up here in New York it's all rainbows and pride parades now," Root replied, patronizingly, eyes serious and piercing. "but that's just in public in big cities in the North, or on the coasts. In people's living rooms and in small towns _nothing_ has changed. I don't know how it is now, but back in the 90s, when I was in high school, do you know what they taught in sex ed? _Homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense_ . And it's true, _homosexual conduct_ is _still_ a crime in Texas, _in 2013_ . So please, _don't_ tell me what year it is as if that makes any difference."

The doctor sat with that information for a moment, not sure how to proceed.

"Not to mention it would severely undercut some of my best pay negotiation tactics." Root smirked as she shifted in her seat, brought the phone down to the waist to avoid obscuring her chest, bared her neck with a hair toss, crossed her legs and batted her eyelashes. The effect was seriously dulled by her dowdy attire, but the implication was clear. Dr. Carmichael, swallowed, remembering distinctly that she knew about his tendency to fantasize about his patients. She was trying to evoke an embarrassing reaction and he wasn't going to let her.

"So… is that why you use drugs when you're seeking out sex?" he cleared his throat. "Is that the only way to get past the fact that you're compelled to do something you consider unacceptable?" He was digging after a weak point he'd already decided was there. An assumption based on bathhouse stories and prurient pornography, none of which actually translated.

"It's not unacceptable to _me_ Ron. I think we've established I don't operate based on anyone else's morals. A _lot_ of what I do is a criminal offense… I'll admit, I would also be anxious if people found out about any of the crimes I _haven't_ already been convicted for."

"Such as?"

"Do you really think I'm going to trust you with that kind of information?" Root asked, rhetorically. "I'm still planning on walking out of here at some point… and not back into jail."

"Fair enough," Ronald sighed, not sure he even wanted to know the answer to the question he'd asked almost automatically. "So… why the drugs?"

" _Purely_ recreational," Root smiled coyly, and gave a gentle nod, looking off up and to the right in fond recollection. "The stories about sex on ecstasy are true. It's just a matter of getting the most bang for my…well... _bang_ ," she raised her eyebrows at her own bad pun. "You should try it at home some time; bring a little excitement back to your marriage. Maybe you wouldn't need to cheat anymore."

"You're giving _me_ relationship advice?" he raised his eyebrows, and even Root had to laugh a little at that.

"It seems like you could use it."

"Have you ever even _had_ a relationship Robin? Would you ever even _want_ to?"

"What's the point in hypotheticals?"

"I'm trying to do my job. Indulge me?"

"If things were different," she thumbed the edge of the phone slowly, "If I lived in one place, in New York or California or something like that. Then yes. I would probably want to have a relationship. The U-haul joke is not _entirely_ hyperbole. It's not that I don't want someone… it's that it's just not a possibility the way I live."

"How does that make you feel?"

"It's not exactly a great feeling to know that you'll never have a _real_ relationship." Root replied, smiling involuntarily. "I can admit that. It's not a big deal, but it's not great either."

"Your mother didn't model relationships to you as a child, right? You never knew your own father or had a stepfather or any other consistent man in the house?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a _good_ thing she didn't bring her dates home," Root countered, "Considering the statistics on child abuse and unrelated males in the house."

"Would it also be a good thing that you never met your father?"

"Technically speaking I may have _met_ him. I just didn't know it. It's not a tiny 700 person town… but 3,000 people still isn't that many. There was always speculation about this guy or another. Four different paternity tests. None of them positive. All of them insisted on by the guys _wives_. Weird."

"That must have been a hard thing to live with, always wondering, knowing everyone else was wondering. That probably carried a heavy shame with it."

"Yeah I guess… but that's a Robbie problem."

"You've said that several times this session… that you're not going to talk about something because it's a Robbie problem."

"It's useful. I'm glad I hit on that way of expressing it."

"Robbie problems are still _your_ problems Robin."

"No. They're really not."

"So do you feel as if Robb ** _ie_ ** and Rob ** _in_ ** are two fundamentally different people?"

"Entirely different," Root replied, firmly.

"In what kind of ways?"

"Well Robbie," her gaze slid sideways becoming somewhat vacant. "Robbie was boring, pathetic, sad, angry, pacifistic, cowardly, perpetually ashamed, guilt ridden, inadequate… and after Anna died…. passively suicidal."

"And Robin?"

"Exciting, capable, happy," Root smiled, looking the Doctor in the eye, almost in challenge, "Indifferent, powerful, fearless, shameless, unrepentant, unstoppable, ineffable and... well, apparently a little _homi_ cidal." A lot homicidal really but if he had a sense of her body count she'd _never_ get out of here.

"Fair enough," he said, "But you are aware that, on a fundamental level, Robbie and Robin are the same person. Right?"

"I'm not Jekyll and Hyde if that's what you're asking. I just… reinvented myself as someone new and better, but had to still play the role of the someone earlier and worse around certain people, and now I don't have to anymore. Which is a relief, because playing that role requires some _very_ difficult mental gymnastics."

"You didn't describe it in terms of a role Robin, you described it in terms of _feelings…_ what would that _role_ look like? Robbie I mean… clearly you've been demonstrating Robin quite well."

Root stopped to think for a moment, slowly manipulating the phone in her hand, and looking far off again… Dr. Carmichael realized belatedly that Robbie problems and discussions of Robin's dead childhood friend resulted in the same eyes averted thousand yard gaze.

"Pearl Prynne. Smart and Peculiar. Poor. Resilient. Responsible. Not really a kid, more like a little grown up. Quiet. Small. Inoffensive. Dowdy. After Anna, sullen, skittish, sometimes snippy, but still never outright defiant. Robbie knew her place and that certain things were entirely futile."

"That is… in many ways rather unlike the Robin sitting here now."

"In all ways… well… except smart," she smiled, light returning to her eyes, "I'm still smart."

"So the different feelings… Robbie feelings… sad, angry, ashamed, are they a result of the work necessary to cage yourself back into this image, or are they an intrinsic part of the person that is Robbie?"

"Intrinsic. I could pretend at all of those things right here and now, and I wouldn't _feel_ any different. That's why all this stuff is not worth discussing. We would literally have to hop a plane all the way back to Texas and sit down there to even come close to get anywhere near those problems. I stay out of Freer; I stay away from all of that. Problem solved."

"So you _literally_ , ran away from your problems."

"I guess I did," Root smiled. "They're always saying you can't do that… but I guess I did. I never really thought of it that way. I always thought of it more as a personal renaissance with a single kryptonite-like weakness."

"Which is?"

" _Freer_ ," Root replied, "We've just been through that."

"How would you feel about doing some hypnotic regression?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well if we can't address these problems because we're not in Freer… perhaps hypnosis would allow us to help you slip back into that mindset, so we can work on healing those Robbie problems that might well be underpinning the Robin problems."

"Or we could focus on the present. The only _problem_ I'm having right now is trying to curb the whole homicidal ideation thing, since _she_ hates it and maybe work on some of the stun first ask questions later stuff. _That's it._ There's nothing else here that needs fixing."

"By your own admissions those homicidal thoughts and urges are rooted in a sort of twisted vigilantism, Robin. You feel a compulsion to kill people you think might rape someone, or hurt or kill children. Your friend, Anna, she was a child, she was raped, she was murdered. You're trying to stop it from happening to anyone else… and that's now. That's a _Robin_ problem, and it all started back then."

"I think this session needs to end," Root replied, cold calm malice overtaking her at his presumption. "Now."

"There's still twenty minutes... left... Robin..." his words slowed and became quieter a she stood from her seat, staring down at him, he felt a spike of anxiety drive through his heart.

"I'm leaving. If you try and come between me and that door, what happens next is entirely on you." she replied, and stalked out, leaving him glued to his chair wide eyed and frozen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And before someone says it... yes I know Root is from Bishop, but Robin is from Freer because the names have been changed to protect the alias (Freer is also a town in Texas, of similar size.) Same reason Robin's friend is named Anna instead of Hannah.


	15. Sharing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the trio are having none of Root's 'I don't need anyone' shit...

"What's with the smiling and the staring?" Tina asked, lifting her head off Lauren's shoulder, Lauren's on Roger's as he leaned on the arm of the chair, making a cute little chain of leaning. It was Sunday evening, and they had been watching TV while Root worked at coloring in a detailed paisley coloring sheet at the small table behind the sofa.

"Sorry," Root said, turning her attention back to her coloring, "It's just… cute, ya'll leaning on one another like that. Looks cozy."

"You know you _can_ come over, and join us." Lauren said, with a smile. "We're friends now, right?"

"Thanks but I don't do the whole… huggy cuddly thing," Root shrugged, digging in the marker box for an orange that would go well with the crimson she'd been using.

"Or we could join you," Roger said, with a little nudge to the girls, the three of them got off the couch and pulled up in the other three chairs around the small table, by which time Root had found the marker she was looking for and resumed coloring. "Are we really okay?"

"Have I done something to make you think we're not?" Root asked, sincerely, looking up from her work.

"Not… exactly? It's just that you still seem kind of distant."

"Because I didn't want to cuddle? I'm just not good with that kind of touching. Boundaries _are_ a thing we're allowed to have," she said, looking back down.

"No not just because of that. It's just that, ever since Wednesday, you've been kind of… _less talky_ and things. It's… I guess it's probably weird from your position, but it's kind of worrying us that you're not being as... creepy as you were before," Tina and Lauren nodded agreement.

"You're right, that is weird," Root agreed, "How is less creepy a problem?"

"Because you _are_ creepy-"

"Thanks?"

"So if you're not being creepy, you're putting up walls and stuff… which makes me think maybe we're not actually okay after Wednesday."

Root chuckled and rolled her eyes. They were reading into things in the strangest possible ways. Then again, these were people who apparently liked her even when she wasn't being someone else which was weird as all hell because last she checked, 'Root' was not someone anyone really wanted to stay in the vicinity of if they could escape. Kelly Dyson, Caroline Turing, Jane von Neumann, these were people people liked. Heck, some people even liked stupid Sam Groves. 'Root' had a slightly otherworldly and predatory aire that generally precluded that.

"And it didn't at all occur to you at all that maybe I'm just making an effort to be nicer because we're friends now?"

"Yeah… it's not coming off nice. It's coming off like… I don't know what. Like not-Robin."

"Coming off like Not-Robin? That is _very_ Robin," Root replied with a tight lipped smile.

"Huh?"

"The whole, being openly creepy thing is more anomalous than hiding it. You think I walk around _out there_ all 'Hi, there, and I'd like to buy a box of Winchester 9mm Luger 115 Grain Full Metal Jacket ammunition, 50 count.'" She imitated what it would be like if she walked up to the gun counter in full 'I will cut you' mode.

"That was… oddly specific."

"My gun is, was, _touchy_ about ammunition. Feed her the wrong cartridges and you get brass stuck in the chamber, and you're prying it out with a screwdriver so you can reload. Not that I've ever had that problem. **_I_ ** follow the manufacturer's instructions. Kick like a mule too. Might have been better off with a Nano. 6 plus 1 capacity, easier on the hands… but you can't just stick that in your jeans pocket and go, ya know? That's a safety hazard. That's the real charm of the Double Tap. True _pocket_ pistol. No holster needed. Not going to shoot you in the ass if you store it in the back of your jeans." And it's designed to change barrels so you can switch between 9mm and 45 so if, for example, you put two in the chest of a government douche, you can swap the barrel out instead of needing to get a whole new gun. No one said you _had_ to swap for 45. You can just put in a 9mm that doesn't have a body on it.

"Now _there's_ Robin," Lauren smiled.

"You guys are so weird," Root shook her head, and resumed her work.

"No really," Lauren explained, "I mean yes, pretty much everything that seems to interest or excite you is… pretty violent, but it's important that friends are real with one another. The better we know one another the better we can support each other. You need to share."

"It's abnormal to you for someone not to spill their entire inner world to people that they've known for two weeks?"

"Things move a little faster in here, what with all the groups and stuff…" Tina said uncertainly.

"Yeah I don't share in group either."

"I noticed," Roger replied, "but that's how we get to know each other. Tell one another what's on our minds, what's going on, when we're doing things that bother one another."

"Like when Tina's meal tray isn't parallel to the edge of the table," Lauren said. "You and Roger are always pretty good about that. I didn't even have to tell you," Lauren smiled. "The phone too… always parallel to the tray, or your papers, or the edge of the table."

"I like things orderly," Root shrugged.

"And I can tell you guys when things are rough and I want to hurt myself," Roger added, "So these guys are more careful with me around sharp stuff, and vigilant in case I'm trying to hide what I'm doing so they don't call a nurse."

"Kind of defeats the purpose of hiding it if you tell people to look out for it. You're basically sabotaging yourself."

"No I'm sabotaging my _illness_. That's the point. I know what it's going to do to me, I know how it works, and I know that right now I can't fight it alone. That's why I'm _in_ here. So if it gets the upper hand on me someone can tell a nurse and help me _stop._ I have friends who can tell me to breath when I'm getting too angry. Have my back around Andrew. Remind me now and then that I'm not the shit show I often think I am."

"You're not a shit show."

"Yeah like that."

"I wasn't- nevermind."

"I know… I was being a bit of a smartass," Roger smiled. "The point is that we can only support one another when we share with one another."

"I don't need support," Root denied, looking and furrowing her brow.

"Just because you don't _need_ it doesn't mean it might not be nice," Roger countered, "Make things easier, lighten the load a little?"

"I wouldn't begin to know where you could even try to do that. Just let it be. Enjoy having a low-maintenance friend around. No expectations, no needs, just… there."

"I'm not sure you know how the friend thing works," Tina said.

"It _has_ been 22 years," Root shrugged.

"How did you get through 22 years without making any friends?" Roger asked.

"Probably the same way I lasted the first 8 that way… I'm a loner. Always have been."

"Oh come on, everyone had friends in like… kindergarten," Tina said disbelievingly, "It's almost mandatory that they invite all the girls or all the boys to their birthday parties and stuff like that."

"Okay… _sharing_ ," Root put the marker down. "Apparently, _some_ people feel it's more polite not to invite the dirt poor kid, so their parents don't feel obligated to buy a gift… at least that's what they tell themselves. I'm pretty sure they just didn't want Beth Farrow's kid around theirs."

"Wait… why?"

"The town I grew up in, Freer Texas, it's small. Not... like micro small, but small enough."

"That explains why you say ya'll," Lauren said.

"Do you have a better way to pluralize you?"

"But no accent…" Tina mused.

"I left there 10 years ago and I haven't been back… but the point is that in a town that size, everyone may not know everyone, but everyone knows anyone who stands out, like Beth Farrow, the town crazy lady," Root giggled. "Well one of them, but as far as I know Bertie Collins was a childless old spinster. Every town has a crazy cat lady, but the crazy cat lady stays quietly in her cat castle and has never been forcibly escorted out of the supermarket due to a disagreement over the price of grapes."

"Oh shit," Roger said in sympathy.

"I guess we know where you get it from then," Lauren surmised.

"Yeah, that's always been kind of a foregone conclusion. Some kids know they're going to grow up and need glasses, or get diabetes, and some kids know they're going to grow up and go batshit crazy. Comparatively I'm doing better than expected," she resumed her coloring. "By my age mom was _lot_ sicker, which is kind of hilarious because you wouldn't think between the two of us _I'd_ be the one to end up in a place like this."

"Well maybe when you're out you can get her some help too?"

"Little late for that Roger, she's 10 years dead."

"Oh."

"It's fine, I'm over it."

"Was it… I mean did she…"

"Probably, but not provably. She wrapped our car around a _tree_. Suicide by auto accident is notoriously difficult to prove."

"I'm so sorr-" Lauren started.

"What did I say about pity?" Root interrupted at a near hiss looking up suddenly.

"Sorry. I mean sorry about the sorry… I mean..."

"I get it," Root stopped her before she went into a recursive loop.

"Still, the people you care about are always dying on you." Roger observed. "That sucks."

"Two points of data do not a pattern make, besides which it's ancient history," Root picked the marker back up and continued coloring in small sections in orange.

"Could still make a person kind of morbid," Lauren said.

"Yeah that happened loooong before that," Root smirked into her work.

"How do you have all that… _ideation_ since loooooong before ten years ago and never act on it?" Tina asked.

Root colored silently for a moment, formulating an answer to that question. 'Actually I've acted on it plenty,' wouldn't really work in this particular scenario, however it probably would do to disabuse them of the notion that she was just constantly a hair's breadth away from random murder.

"It comes and goes," she explained, "The killing thing. What's that term they're always using here? Trigger? That's only triggered by people like Andrew… or Dr. Creepmichael. It's I guess kind of a compulsion-y thing? It's not like I think I'll enjoy it, it's more like _not_ doing it hurts."

"I know _that_ feel," Lauren nodded.

"If you don't kill that guy, you're responsible for what happens to whomever they hurt next," Roger remembered the worksheet.

"Right."

"But you know, probably it would be hard to live with yourself if you did do it. If you were an actual killer."

"Um… no," Root exhaled a small laugh, "I don't think I'd enjoy killing someone but.... I _do_ like to hurt them, and I've never felt bad about that. I doubt killing them would be much different. Might bother me some, but not as much as it should."

"You like _hurting_ people?"

"I'm a sadist. Some people think 'after today, I need a drink,' or 'after today, I need a bath.' I think, 'after today I really need to make someone whimper and beg for me to stop.' See this is why sharing is weird," she put the marker down in frustration, "Saying this stuff is probably scaring you and I'm trying _not_ to do the scaring thing…"

"There's a difference between saying it because you were asked, and it's true, and playing it up to freak people out."

"The one just seems like an excuse to indulge in the other," Root admitted.

"Guess that's a win-win then," Roger smiled.

"If you say so," Root sighed, and picked up the marker again. "Is that enough sharing for now?"

"Not really… I mean history is good," Roger couched, "History is great… but I guess what we're looking for is more… well… we want to help. It's great you're willing to step up and _be_ a friend, but it's going to be awkward and one sides if you aren't willing to _have_ friends."

"If we _are_ friends, don't I _have_ friends?"

"I mean you need to let us _be_ friends back. It's uneven if you're not sharing _your_ load as well."

"I don't need that kind of help. Relying on other people, it's just _not_ how I operate. I don't need anyone, _ever_."

"What about _her_?" Roger asked.

"Except her," Root conceded, looking back at Roger, "and I walked into that one, both conversationally just now, and… walked into winding up needing her."

"Why? If you never rely on anyone ever, why let yourself end up needing _her_?" Lauren asked.

"Accident. The goal was just to free her to ascend to her rightful place, but I Icarused myself in the process, which would have been worth it if I'd actually succeeded. Joke's on me though because she'd already freed herself."

"Icarused yourself?" Roger queried.

"Icarus, Greek myth about the kid who flew too close to the sun and melted his wings? I got close enough to her that it's unbearable _not_ to be with her. It's pretty much the only reason I'm listening to her on the whole, not hurting and killing people thing. It's important to consider her wishes. If she bails on me, I'll wind up right back down on E, forever. Well, that and the fact that she's essentially a god, so whatever she's saying to do, it's probably wise to listen."

"So you can rely on a hallucination, but not other people?" Lauren said, sounding a little bitter.

" _Not_ a hallucination."

"C'mon Lauren don't be like that," he said, "trust issues are a symptom some people have, you know that."

" _Not_ a symptom," Root protested.

"You're not helping Robin," Roger warned.

"You're not helping making this out to be a _weakness_ on my part," Root replied.

"Well it is. You're not _able_ to trust us enough to tell us how to help you when you're having a bad time."

"There's nothing to _tell_. I don't _need_ help."

"You don't just not need it, you're _refusing_ it."

"I think that's my prerogative."

"And you're refusing it because you _can't_ accept it."

"I'm refusing it because I _won't_ accept it."

"I get that that's what you _want_ us to think, so we won't think you can't."

"This is ridiculous."

"If you could, you'd just do it so we don't think you can't."

"If I did you'd think I _need_ it."

"Now _that's_ ridiculous. You clearly don't since you haven't had any friends in twenty two years. You'd have crashed and burned long before now if you _did_ need it."

"Stop fighting!" Tina complained.

Root sighed, and didn't respond to Roger. Lauren continued to sulk.  

"Sorry," Roger apologized to Tina.

"You're conceited," Lauren mumbled at Root.

"The term you're looking for is grandiose," she replied, "although I've never really thought it applied in my case. Although I suppose it's possible that you can be grandiose and actually superior at the same time just like you can be paranoid and actually in danger at the same time."

"So superior," Lauren rolled her eyes, "way too good for us plebs."

"It's not like that."

"Oh then what's it like," Lauren scowled.

"Kind of a pain in the ass," Root admitted. "Too much responsibility."

"You could always climb down off the high horse."

"I'm a certified genius. Not acknowledging it wouldn't make it not true. It won't change the fact that I have the capacity and capability to kill without remorse, that I can lie point blank to your face and you'd never know it, or that I've yet to meet a man, well straight man anyway, whose brain wasn't easily clouded by the suggestion he might be able to hit this. There's pretty much no advantage I don't have… so failure is not an option. There's _no excuse_."

"Riiiiight… and I have some oceanfront property to sell you in Oklahoma."

"I meant it when I said _certified._ There's paperwork to back that up. Probably gathering dust in some file cabinet in Freer, but it exists. The school ran a bunch of tests when I was 13."

"Huh, check out Ms. Valedictorian," Roger teased.

"Hardly," Root chuckled, "I barely went to school after 6th grade, and then I dropped out as soon as I turned 18. I had more important things to do than go to class. That's why they ran the tests in the first place, trying to figure out how someone who doesn't come to class most days can pass the tests."

"Seriously? You just… _dropped out_?"

"Yup," Root refrained from explaining, knowing it would take them down a tangent she didn't feel like dealing with at the time.

"Grandiosity… is that why you're so chill about everything? Like nothing scares you." Tina smiled, "I wish I had half the confidence you do. It sucks being scared of everything all the time. I'm always hiding behind one of these guys. They protect me from people picking on me, and loud noises and stuff… and stuff that reminds me of… of what happened. I'll... I'll tell you that later."

"I think I've got the vague outline," Root said, quite a bit less condescending than one would have expected. "And you can hide behind me anytime."

"I dropped out too," Tina offered, by way of trying to connect. "It was college though. After three semesters I couldn't do it anymore and I had to move home with my parents. I couldn't do the whole… living on my own thing, even in the dorms. It was just too much."

"You're young enough," Root said trying to sound encouraging, "You can pick up where you left off once you get better."

She took notice then of Roger and Lauren talking close and quiet to the other side of her, and arched her brows in a silent question. Lauren looked back, wounded and Root rolled her eyes and sighed.

"I'm sorry I don't have what you want," Root said, "If I did, I'd give it to you. I don't want you all… sad like that. It's not that I'm not _able_ to accept help," she shot a pointed look at Roger, "And it's not _just_ that I think it would be pretty unacceptable to appear to need it. The truth is… I also haven't got the first clue what it would even look like."

"Well," Roger tried to come up with a way to help her figure it out, "What makes you feel better when things are hard?"

"Talking to her," Root shrugged, "and making people do what I want them to. That's pretty much it. I guess, if things are dicey, and it looks like I might do something unwise you could help by asking me what _she_ thinks about it? That's something you can do. Either I'll remember she would disapprove and try not to do it or I'll have to check in with her and it'll at least give her a chance to talk me down from whatever it is. But really, if things go sideways you're better off thinking of yourself. Get clear. Avoid becoming collateral damage. At that point probably they'll force me into seclusion anyway, and there's nothing you can do at that point."

"That's a start," Roger said, glancing at Lauren to see if it was helping her any. "What did you do before her? This is new, right? When you were on your own, how did you handle that?"

"Hurt someone. Probably not the best of ideas here."

"I mean… like to comfort yourself? I do good with back rubs, little circles just above the small of my back. My mom used to do that when I was little and I was crying, and it… just sort of stuck."

"I hide under a blanket. I don't know why it works… it's not like a blanket actually protects you from anything," Tina said, Lauren didn't offer anything up. Root rubbed at her temples, and tried to decide which was more important… Lauren's feelings or her dignity.

"Rob-"

"Give me a minute okay?" she interrupted Roger. "It's embarrassing."

"Okay."

"A plushie. Hug a plushie. Okay? Happy?"

The collected blinked back at her.

"See this is _exactly_ why it was hard to say that," Root huffed.

"You're serious? That's real?" Lauren asked tentatively.

"I wouldn't make up something that embarrassing."

"You know like, half the unit has stuffed animals, right?" Roger replied, disbelievingly. "I mean I'd see where you were coming from if you took it eeeeeverywhere like Justine… but just having one in your room? That's about a thousand miles from embarrassing in here."

"Not to me," Root muttered.

"What's he like?" Tina asked, "Or she?"

"I've been through a few… Uglydolls mostly, for the past few years. I don't have one at the moment. My uncle didn't know about it so he didn't pack it, and I wasn't about to _tell him_ , so I'm doing without. It's not a big deal. I move around a lot. They get lost. Takes me a while to get around to ordering a new one. It's non-essential."

"In places like this… every little bit helps… lots of bad feelings come up here."

"I don't know that that's really going to be an issue for me. The bad feelings, anger, sadness, guilt… I just don't get those. Out there, I'm almost always happy, having fun, getting things done. In here… I'm irritated because I'm _not_ out there having fun and getting things done. Also people keep poking at me… brainwise. I'd rather they didn't. Point is comfort is for things like catching the flu or a killer case of cramps. Feelings don't come into it."

"They're going to," Lauren said, sagely, "People come in like that all the time, thinking they're never sad, never scared, never weak… but no one _leaves_ here like that. Either you break, and all that shit comes back, or you're a lifer, like Andrew."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: The DoubleTap derringer actually IS super picky about ammunition, and according to reviews a pain in the hand to shoot, which usually doesn't matter because it's designed as a last ditch backup, NOT a primary weapon. So we'll just put another mark in the 'Root's ridiculously high pain tolerance' category for her choice to use only that in all of Season 2.


	16. Anger Management

"Robin," the group leader asked, "this is your third time at this group and you really haven't had anything to say yet when we're sharing things that make us angry. Would you like to contribute?"

"Not particularly," she replied, as if it had been a genuine question of desire, arms crossed against her front, and phone clutched in her right hand.

"Why is that?"

"Mostly because I'm sitting in a room with a half a dozen people, most of them bigger than me, all of whom have anger problems and a history of violence and I'd rather not say the wrong thing," she replied, glancing around the circle.

"That's because this is an anger management group Robin."

"That'd be the other reason," she replied, evenly. "I'm really not sure why I've been assigned to this group. I'm not angry, so I don't have much to learn here. I really only show up so I'm marked in compliance."

"Okay, well if you don't start participating, we're not going to mark you that way anymore. You've been working pretty hard to gain privileges the past two weeks, and I'd hate to see you not get them because of this."

"Threats?" she tutted, sitting forward and dropping her arms from their defensive position. "That's not a very productive way of expressing your frustration Alex." A chuckle went up from several of the other patients, as she parroted back a lesson he'd tried to teach in an earlier session.

"Okay Robin, you want to know why you're here?" Alex said, allowing uncharacteristic irritation into his voice, "Because of behavior like that."

"Like what? Those are your words, not mine," she feigned innocence.

"You _also_ have a history of violence, no different to the rest of the group, and just because you're not shouting at people doesn't mean you're not angry. That kind of sarcasm, that _mocking_ , that's what we call _passive aggression_. And coming to your groups, but then refusing to participate? Dragging your feet on everything we ask of you? That's passive aggression too. You feign compliance: that's the passive part. Then you covertly sabotage everything you're involved with: that's the aggression."

"What I'm _doing_ is my absolute best to go along with this charade," she replied, a little sourly, re-crossing her arms. "The whole thing is patently ridiculous."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Alex replied, "You feel like this is ridiculous. Talk to me about that."

"What?"

"Tell us all how completely ridiculous all this is. Share that."

"Okay," she shrugged, with a small raise of her eyebrows. "I had a problem when I got here: I was a walking vegetable. I woke up, which you'd think would be the end of that, but not only am I still here, I'm up on the M-Unit with the most possible restrictions of any unit in this place," Root addressed Alex cleanly, quietly, but with no small degree of condescension. "For the past two weeks, I've done _everything_ you people ask of me, I have not so much as raised my voice to anyone since I got my phone back. I go where I'm supposed to be, eat when I'm told, sleep when I'm told. I keep my head down and my mouth shut, and now, apparently you're telling me that unless I start to make up reasons to be _angry_ , you're going to start stripping away what few privileges I've got. I don't have anything to contribute here Alex. I can't give you what I don't have. Anger just… isn't something I do."

"You have several convictions for _assault_ Robin. You threatened to kill a patient downstairs and your psychiatrist up here. And just before you fell into catatonia, you were waving a gun around."

"I wasn't waving it," she corrected, "I had it aimed very precisely."

"That doesn't make it any better Robin. The point of the matter is that you were wielding a deadly weapon at someone, and the police had to shoot you to save your Uncle. That's exactly the kind of angry violent behavior that we address in this group."

"I think it _does_ make a difference. Waving guns _is_ something crazy _angry_ people do," Root shrugged, "Aiming them, on the other hand, is something people do when they want to shoot someone, whether they're _angry_ or not. I'll gladly keep showing up to these little meetings, because that's what's being asked of me, but I'm not willing to sit here and make up reasons I'm _not okay_ just to participate in your little exercises."

"You may be _okay_ now, but by all accounts you were also okay just days before each of these events. We need to figure out what's causing these outbursts."

"They're not outbursts. I made some incorrect _choices_ , so I'll just choose _differently_ in the future."

"Robin, you should understand that we can't just take your word for that. Now the others have all shared something that they're angry about today… can you give us anything? Maybe you don't want to say 'angry.' Do you find something irritating? Annoying? Is something bothering you?"

"Bothering me? Sure… there are things that are _bothering_ me," Root acquiesced, casually, "I have been so nauseous I can barely eat for the past two days, which I can only assume is another side effect of the _very_ unpleasant detox I'm undergoing from drugs that _you_ people put into my system in the first place," the floodgates opened releasing a litany of matter-of-fact complaints, "I'm bored out of my head because I'm not allowed to watch anything good on TV, I still haven't earned computer access, and they vetoed all but one of the books I wanted to read, which I've finished already.

"I can't get a decent night's sleep because someone's shining a flashlight in my face every 15 minutes all night. I can't have sleeping pills while tapering off the benzos and the melatonin is doing fuck-all, and of course having someone up my butt every 15 minutes doesn't stop during the day so privacy here is approximately nil. I can't take a crap without someone peeking into the bathroom. The coffee is never hot enough, the food sucks, and I'm starting to go _little bit_ stir crazy from being cooped up in this place 24/7, because the sun deck is just _barely_ a semblance of being outdoors.

"And just to add insult to injury I'm supposed to come here every Tuesday and Thursday and listen to a bunch of malcontents talk about how they can't stop themselves from committing acts of uncoordinated _poorly planned_ violence, just because they got their _feelings_ hurt. That's what's bothering me today Alex."

"Thank you Robin," the circle replied in unison, and Root slumped into her chair rolling her eyes at the absurdity of it all. Somehow everyone reacting to her as if she had in fact shared what she was angry about, only rubbed salt in the wound.

"But I'm _not_ angry about it," she added, sullenly.

"Yes, Roger," Alex called on one of the other patients who had raised his hand.

"I'm also a bit angry about bed checks," Roger said, "Robin's right. I swear lately the techs have been shining the flashlights right in our faces on purpose. They're messing with us."

"I said I'm not angry."

"She's right about the coffee too," another patient added, without being called on. "That pisses me off."

"Not pissed either," she muttered.

"Yes, Andrew."

"I'm mad that Robin thinks she's better than the rest of us, when she's clearly not."

"Excuse you?" Root sat up straighter.

"You said you didn't want to participate because you think one of us is going to attack you if you say the wrong thing… well that's pretty much the wrongest thing you could say," Andrew explained, "We all talk about our shit every day in here in front of you, and you had to go to seclusion because you were gonna kill your doctor. No one here is afraid of you. So where do you get off being afraid of us when you're just as bad?"

"I'm not _afraid of you,_ "  Root scoffed. "It's just that I know if someone gets into a fight around here, it gets marked against both parties, even if one party was clearly the aggressor. If I have to put you down, even in self defense, I'm going to wind up getting marked violent again. I don't need that kind of trouble."

"I think you just have a problem with _men_ ," Andrew growled, "You think you're better because you're the only girl in this group. You think we're below you."

"I think _you_ have a problem with women, which for the record I haven't been a _girl_ in about twenty five years. I pointed a gun at my _Uncle_. You stabbed your _Wife_."

"Your Uncle is a man."

"Statistically, people who have a problem with the the whole of the opposite gender do so because of _sex_ Andrew, so unless you think I've been harboring the hots for my peanut of an Uncle," her tone suggested that was laughable, "I had an isolated interpersonal conflict, whereas your conflict with your wife is just a manifestation of your overall misogyny."

"Interpersonal? Manifestation? You think using five dollar words makes you sound smarter? Always acting like you're some kind of genius. You're not fooling anyone. You're just a stupid dropout bitch."

"People who stab people with paring knives don't get to call anyone stupid," Root laughed. " _A paring knife,_ Andrew! They're only three inches long. The only way you kill someone with that is to go for something like the femoral or the carotid, and you went for the _ribcage_. You stabbed her _sixteen_ times, and you couldn't hit _one_ major artery. Amateur hour."

"You could have done better?"

"Assuming I actually _wanted_ to kill your wife? Yes: because I don't get angry. Anger makes you screw things up."

"Okay Andrew, Robin that's enough," Alex intervened, "One thing we definitely do not discuss in this group is who's better at killing people."

"Because I'd win every time."

"Robin!"

Root put up her hands in mock surrender and leaned back in her chair.

"Roger, did you have something to add?" Alex called on a group member with his hand up.

"Yeah," he nodded, "I uh… I think maybe Andrew's right. I mean… not entirely right. I don't think Robin thinks she's better than us but… I do think she's scared."

"Thanks Roger. Thanks a lot," Root replied, sounding betrayed. "You know damn well I'm not scared."

"But you are. That's why you're trying to make us think you're all 'scary dangerous cold blooded killer,' which is the opposite of what you've been trying to do since seclusion. You're so scared of getting hurt you forgot you're trying _not_ to scare other people anymore. You make yourself scary when _you're_ scared. Like a bird puffing out its feathers."

"That was a _hypothetical_. I don't do scared, and I don't do angry," Root replied, "I do do annoyed however, and you are starting to get on my last nerve."

"Annoyed is a kind of anger."

"Yes it is Andrew," Alex affirmed, "Talk to us about why you're annoyed with Roger, Robin."

"I'm pretty sure he just managed to say that I'm scared like half a dozen times in under a minute, which is bull," Root explained, "Check my file Alex, I have ' _a reckless disregard for personal safety_.' There is nothing that anyone in this room can dish out that I can't take."

"So you're doubling down on the 'I'm not scared, I'm scary,' thing," Alex replied.

"I'm not scared _or_ scary," Root replied, sullenly, "I just don't want another incident."

"I think they're right, you _are_ scared," Alex replied.

"Excuse me?"

"You're scared of _us_ , of the staff. You said it yourself, you don't care if someone here tries to hurt you. You don't want to get marked for being in a fight. You can take anything anyone here can dish out, except this," he held up the clipboard. "You're scared of negative marks, of losing privileges, and you're scared of seclusion, because you can't have that with you if you go," he pointed to the phone she was now holding in a white knuckled vice grip in her hand.

That stopped Root dead in her tracks. She opened her mouth as if to retort, but shortly thereafter closed it again. She ran the fingers of her unoccupied hand through her hair, and lowered her gaze, trying to think of something, anything to say to that.

"And most of all, you're scared to participate in these groups because you think that admitting to feeling anything, having any kind of difficulty, is going to keep you here _forever_."

An uneasy silence fell upon the room, until without looking up, she spoke again, almost inaudibly. "I'd have to be _actually_ crazy, not to be scared of _that_ ," she raised her gaze, looking Alex in the eye, "Because _I don't belong in here_."

"Robin, your best chance of getting out of here is _not_ to pretend that you're already okay. We've already seen with out own eyes that that's not the case. That doesn't show any growth or improvement. You need to acknowledge that you have problems and show us that you can make changes and learn new coping skills."

"But," she protested, "I'm not _angry_."

"Okay Robin I think you're getting hung up on that word," Alex said, and there was a murmur of agreement from the group. "Because _whatever_ it is you're feeling when you do it, you _do_ get inappropriately violent with people sometimes, to the point where you've spent time in jail over it. You need to learn other ways of dealing in those situations."

"You want to know what I'm _feeling_ , when I _hurt_ someone Alex?" she leaned forward, conspiratorially.

"Enlighten us."

"Pity," Root replied, shrugging and sitting back in her chair. "It's sad when someone so completely fails to listen to reason that they make it _necessary_ to resort to violence. I don't hurt other people out of _anger_ , that's base animalism. Violence, or threat thereof, is best applied as a calculated deterrent to undesirable behaviors… unless there's fiscal incentive, then all bets are off."

"There she goes with the five dollar words again."

"So you use violence to to dispense… _justice_?" Alex inquired, ignoring the implication that she would also hurt someone if paid to do so. "Dispassionately punishing others for doing things you deem unacceptable."

"That or just for kicks," she admitted. "Sometimes it's just inherently satisfying to inflict pain, but that's often better indulged in via less overt methods than violence."

"And what if you couldn't? What if there was absolutely _no way_ to make someone pay? How would you feel then?"

Root sat with the question for a moment. The answer had leapt immediately to her mind, but she was seeking something else to say instead.

"Robin?"

"Angry," she admitted, "I would feel angry. Happy now? You found something that would _hypothetically_ make me angry. It only took you wasting half the session."

"I don't think it's a waste at all Robin. I think we finally figured out why you don't _do_ anger, _and_ why you need to be here."

"Those are _mutually exclusive_ ," Root replied as if she thought Alex was slow.

"Not exactly Robin," Alex replied. "You _are_ different to the other people in this room, but not as different as you think. They get angry, and it makes them violent. You get violent, or otherwise cruel, as a way to _avoid_ getting angry. You don't get mad, as the saying goes, _you get even_. So before we can work on anger management, we need to work on… let's call it _retribution_ management. You need to learn to resist the urge to substitute revenge for anger."

Root scowled.

"So this is going to seem a little backwards to the rest of you, but I want to try something. You know that we work in this group to find ways to cope with anger without causing disruption or hurting anyone. We work on self calming, and emotional regulation. Now Robin's got that all handled… but her way of regulating herself is one that _hurts_ others."

A few people murmured in agreement, and others looked confused.

"So Robin, we're going to turn the tables on you. When we start group, and we talk about things that made us angry, you're going to tell us about things that are making you want to get even. You don't do anger, fine. we're going to talk about things that give you that impulse to hurt people, to make them _pay_.

"And we do successes, you know that we usually share something that we could have gotten angry over, could have acted out about, but didn't. For you, I want you to tell us about a time when you refrained from getting revenge and tolerated feeling anger instead, even if that means that you raised your voice to someone, or punched a table or did something else we don't do in this group, because you have to learn to _be_ angry before you can manage it."

"That _is_ hella backwards," one of the other patients remarked. "How come she gets to be angry and we don't?"

"No I get it," Roger piped up, "We're supposed to manage our anger and find ways to stay calm because when we're angry we do stupid shit. She's doing stupid shit to try and _avoid_ getting angry, so she's got to learn to give that up and let herself be angry _instead_ of doing stupid shit. The point isn't if we're angry or not, it's if we do stupid shit or not."

"Very well put Roger," Alex smiled.

 

* * *

 

Four hours later, Alex was coming out of his third group, and looking forward to heading home. It hadn't been a particularly easy day, but he was still feeling pretty good about the way that he'd handled the morning group, until he found out what had transpired in the meantime.

"Geeze, what happened here?" Alex stepped around the blood droplets in the hallway.

"Andrew," the nurse's aide replied, "It's ok, they've got him in seclusion now, janitorial's on their way, and Robin's taking it like a trooper."

"Robin?"

"Yeah, he just kind of went off on her, totally berserk," she shrugged, "You know how Andrew can be. She's pretty banged up, but it didn't set her off, so there's that at least. Could have had a full on fight. I expected she would try to gouge his eyes out or something… but the fight's gone out of her since that trip to seclusion, it would seem."

"He was making progress," Alex said, furrowing his brow, "and Robin… where's Robin?"

"In her room, last I saw."

Alex sighed and turned down the dorm hallway, making his way to her door. Inside her room, Root was perched near the head of her bed, reading a book and idly stroking the blooming purple bruise on the side of her face with one finger, a strange expression of contentment on her face, and just a touch of dried blood below the opposite nostril.

"Do you mind if I come in Robin?" he knocked on the open door, and she pulled her hand away from her face as if she'd been caught with it in the cookie jar.

"Not at all," she smiled, and put down the book. "What brings you down my neck of the woods?" she asked tilting her head to the side. "Forget to give me some homework or something?"

"I hear you got into it with Andrew," he said, pulling her desk chair up alongside her bed and sitting down in it. "You want to talk to me about that?"

"There's nothing much to say," she shrugged, the hand that had been on her face making its way into her sweater pocket to grasp the phone within, "He's bad code. There's no accounting for that. I guess he was just angry over some of the things I said to him this morning in group, and like you say, people do stupid things when they're angry."

"Yes… that's what they tell me," he said, narrowing his eyes at her. "But I don't believe them, or you." Root raised her eyebrows in a mockery of offense, and rolled her eyes. "I think you were the one who started that fight Robin."

"Look at the tapes if you don't believe me," she said, "You have tapes right? There's enough cameras in this place. I didn't lay a finger on him. I didn't even fight back."

"Oh that much I believe," Alex said. "You're smarter than that. You know and I know that if you'd taken one swing at him, you'd be in seclusion now right now too. They don't stop to ask questions. So instead you went tortoise and waited for the techs to rescue you."

"And based on that you somehow come to the conclusion that I started the fight?"

"You are very, _very_ smart Robin. Too smart for your own good I think, and as you said earlier today, you have a _reckless disregard for personal safety_. So here's what I think Robin. I think that after our group this morning, the scales between you and Andrew felt more than a little unbalanced. He mocked you, threatened you, and he called you stupid. His violent outbursts are almost always directed at women, which doesn't help your image of him. His behavior is unacceptable to you. That couldn't be allowed to stand.

"Your retribution options are limited, because if you try to hurt someone, or say you're going to kill them, you know we'll stop you and you'll get into trouble, so instead you waited a few hours, you thought it over, and you very carefully _engineered_ a situation where he would attack you. It probably took hours to pay off. A little push here and a little nudge there. Carefully manipulating his emotions. That's how you operate. You provoked that fight because you wanted it, you wanted him sent to seclusion. You were willing to take a beating just to get him in trouble. You leveraged the only people in here who _can_ hurt Andrew, to even the scales _for_ you."

Root let out a small exhaled laugh, a Cheshire grin crawling across her face. "Guilty." She thrust her wrists toward Alex, mockingly. "Arrest me."

"You think this is funny Robin?"

"I think there's nothing you can do about it. Provoked or not, he did what he did, and it's not going to change his predicament now. Besides, if a modicum of mockery is all it takes to light that powder keg, he probably _needs_ to be in seclusion. I may have opened the door, but he walked through it on his own… like I said. Bad code."

"It's true I can't reverse Andrew's punishment, but that doesn't mean there's nothing I can do Robin. Andrew is being held responsible for his actions," Alex sighed, and stood up, "But you still need to be held responsible for yours."

Root's brow furrowed and she tilted her head with a disbelieving smirk. "I didn't do anything actually _wrong_."

"You poked the bear, and you knew full well you were doing it. That's _manipulation_ Robin. Your manipulation put yourself not just at a chance of being hurt, but a certainty. That's _recklessness_ , maybe even _self injury_. So I'm going to have to make sure that's an incident in _your_ report today too. You don't have to take a swing to be an instigator. Attacks can be mental as well."

She narrowed her eyes at him, straightening her head as she did, but it was the only perceptible sign of anger in her whole body.

"The scales are back out of balance, aren't they," he asked. She didn't answer. "Good. You may as well get angry with me Robin, because there's nothing you can do to keep things even between us. After all, I have this," he held up the clipboard, and backed out of the room. "So I'll win every time. Sit with that. Try to tolerate it."

Root stared after him as he left, and moments after he was out of sight jumped off the bed, flying across the room. "Here's your anger!" she shouted and slammed her door shut as hard and as loud as she could. "SHIT!" She crumpled to the floor with her back against it, defeated. Alex was right. As long as she was in here he, and any other staffer, could put whatever they wanted on one of their stupid little clipboards and fuck her day, and anything she did to get even would just go right down next to it. A no-win scenario. After a moment of stillness she threw her head back against the door… Bang. Bang. Bang. She was interrupted by a vibration in her pocket.

**STOP.**

"You are _not_ helping," she snapped, but she did stop, instead slamming the side of her left fist into the floor.

**STOP.**

"You said that already!"

 **IMPACTING HARD SURFACES** **  
** **CARRIES RISK OF INJURY**

" _Impacting hard surfaces_ is the only thing stopping me from completely losing control at the moment," she hissed and threw her head back against the door once more defiantly, and kicked her heels off the floor for good measure.

"Robin?" Alex was back outside the door, concerned at what seemed to be a disproportionate reaction to a simple note in a record. In the heat of frustration, Root had forgotten that the door lead to the hall, and the hall was practically an echo chamber, so every time she knocked the back of her head into it, the sound was carrying for anyone to hear, including Alex as he left. She switched to slamming the side of her fist on the ground, and silently willed him to go away. It seemed like it might be working, because it went quiet in the hall.

"Shouldn't you _do_ something?" another voice said after a while.

"Roger you need to let me handle this okay? I'm trying to give her a chance to get control… Robin and seclusion do not mix well and I don't want to use it if I don't have to. Things went _poorly_ last time."

"What do you mean poorly?"

"That's really not something I can discuss," Alex said.

"Because you're covering Carmichael's ass!!!" Root shouted, punctuating the statement with another crack of head against door. That was the last straw for Alex. The doorknob turned and she felt the pressure at her back as he tried to push the door open. "SHIT," she planted her feet to prevent sliding forward, pressing back with shoulders and head to keep the door shut.

"Robin I'm coming in," he said pushing harder. Her feet stayed where they were but her knees bent under the pressure, and Alex slipped his way into the room, door shutting again behind him as she continued pushing back with her legs. "Okay this needs to stop," he knelt down at her right side and put his left hand on the back of her head pressing forward slightly in case she tried to bang it on the door again. "Do you need me to help?"

"Don't touch me," she hissed, batting at his arm (more in protest than an attempt to hurt, luckily for him) while the small portion of her, trapped at the back of her mind observing all of this helplessly, died a little inside that now there was a witness to all this nonsense.

"Ow! Robin. Stop!" he tried to deflect the swatting with his right forearm, to little success. "I'll let go, but you have to promise not to hit your head like that again. I can't let you hurt yourself."

"I won't, just let go!" she didn't stop hitting his arm until he did. "And I'm _not_ hurting myself." As soon as he withdrew she folded forward on herself right arm tightly around her knees, while the left resumed beating on the floor in a steady rhythm, stewing in resentment that he would compare what registered to her as an expression of frustration and a means of exerting some semblance of self control as anything similar to the kind of thing Roger was doing when he cut himself.

"You're slamming your head into a door. You can't tell me that doesn't hurt." He received no answer. "Talk to me Robin. What's going on here?" he sat back on his heels.

"Exactly what you wanted," she snapped, staring daggers off into the corner. "Well done Alex. You wanted me angry? Now I'm angry, and I don't know what to do. I told you before I don't _do_ angry. Angry is not a place I go. Angry makes you stupid. But right now I am _very_ angry, and apparently _very_ stupid because I _don't_ ," thump " _know what_ ," thump," _to do_ ," thump. She punctuated her words with her fist.

"Do you need to do _anything_? What's the goal here?"

"Make it stop," she muttered thru gritted teeth bared in a wince.

"Make what stop?"

"I don't _know_ ," she stopped hitting the floor and laced the fingers of her left hand into her hair at her forehead pulling it into a fist and clenching tightly. She giggled a little despite herself, somehow mixing anger with levity. There was no acceptable way to explain that 'it' was a strong impulse to fall on the ground flailing and screaming like an actual toddler, which she was unable to actually conceptualize as being her own because the entire idea was absurd, and the more broad explanation of 'I feel like I'm losing my damn mind,' wasn't really something that seemed like a good idea to say given where she was and who she was talking to.

"You didn't seem to care that I figured you out… is this really about getting a note in your report? Or is something else going on here Robin?"

"Get out of my room Alex." she stood abruptly, pushing past him, and by the time he stood to follow she was face down on the bed with the pillow pressed over her head, left hand holding it firmly in place, right hand underneath, presumably with the phone. "Go take your fucking clipboard and steal someone _else's_ last shreds of dignity."

 


	17. Help-less

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helpless, unable to help yourself. Help-less, not receiving/accepting any help. A hyphen makes all the difference... or does it.

"Do you have a minute?"

"For you Alex? Always," Ronald rolled back a little from his desk, looking up.

"Can I talk to you for a bit about Robin?"

"Why is it _always_ about Robin," he sighed, sitting back in his chair, and rubbing his mouth. "What is it this time?"

"I was just wondering... " Alex pulled a page out of his paperwork, laying it on top of the folder he was holding, "I was re-reading her cheat sheet, and there's a lot here about being wary of the danger she poses, sadism, of course the situation with the phone, the anticipated resistance to treatment and participation, the whole kidnapped best friend thing, but I feel like I'm _missing_ something here."

"Sit," he gestured, a little relieved that this wasn't about something she'd done for once.

"Did you hear about the incident earlier today?"

"No. Do I want to?"

"Andrew kicked the snot out of her."

"Hmm… " the Doctor seemed ambivalent. "Is she okay?"

"A little bruised. In fact, it doesn't seem to bother her at all… and when I confronted her about it she admitted that she _provoked_ him into it," he said, concerned. "It seems an awful lot like recreating trauma. Is there a history of physical abuse I should know about?"

"Not as far as I know," he replied, "I wouldn't put it past her to have not told us, but not as far as I know. She was pretty much just... left to her own devices, which accounts for her strong resistance to pretty much all constraints and rules."

"You mean she was _neglected._ "

"Perhaps. It's not entirely clear if it was from too early an age or not. She dismisses most attempts to gain insight into anything further back than ten years or so as 'Robbie Problems," which she refuses to discuss. The only thing that's truly certain is she was allowed to grow up without any respect for rules or consequences or _authority_ ," he replied. "Other than that… she doesn't share much from that period."

"Gee I wonder why?"

"Are you being sarcastic with me?"

"I _heard_ about the seclusion incident," Alex replied, "You know you've made _everyone's_ job harder by setting things off on an antagonistic footing in the first few days. It's hard to get anywhere with someone who's been given ample _good_ reason to resent the control exerted over them in a place like this."

"I doubt very much it made a difference with Robin," the doctor replied condescendingly, "She's involuntary and has been highly resistant from the outset. We're not going to get anywhere with her until she accepts she's _not_ the one in control here, and that's going to take a lot of time. We can't help her until she _gives in_ to treatment and starts to do as she's told in group and individual."

Alex stared back at the doctor, blinked. took a deep breath. "I think I'm starting to see what I've been missing," he said, and stood up from the chair.

"What is that supposed to mean," Dr. Carmichael said, defensively.

"It's not just the one incident. You're continually fostering an antagonistic dynamic," Alex replied, "and I just blundered _right_ into the middle of it."

"It's not an antagonistic dynamic Alex. It's an antagonistic _patient_. This isn't some daddy issues, dependent, depressive, low self esteem case," Dr. Carmichael said firmly, "This isn't about taking a broken bird and teaching her to fly again. This is a criminal offender. She's already been to jail several times. She's an admitted sadist. She's already tried to kill at _least_ twice. If you're letting her garner sympathy by provoking Andrew into hurting her, you're falling for a trick. Robin is _not_ a victim. Don't let her play you like that."

"Do you realize the way you sound?"

"I probably sound very harsh, but I promise you this is for her own good. This is about breaking her down to a place where she is _forced_ to accept our help. She's not going to give up enough control to accept treatment unless we wrest it from her by force."

"Is that what you were trying to do when you stuck her in seclusion without cause? Trying to break her?"

"I was trying to break her _delusion_. It was a mistake. I recognize that. The voice is the only one she's interested in giving _any_ control over to. But Alex? You need to wise up, or she's going to run right over you."

"I'll take that under advisement," Alex muttered, leaving the room in a huff.

 

* * *

 

"Robin?" Lauren knocked gently on the door, "Robin?" receiving no answer, she turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door, peering in.

Root was laying in bed, covers twisted ineffectual around her feet, pillow covering her head, still dressed, including her sweater. After Alex had gone, she'd spent time tossing and turning in vain to find a position that would alleviate the physical discomfort associated with the situation, and eventually fell half asleep, Machine talking softly in her ear about how unstoppable Root was sure to feel when they were finally working together and how all this indignity would surely be worth it.

"Robin?" Lauren entered the room tentatively, and approached the foot of the bed.

"Mmrhm," Root replied, not particularly keen to return to full wakefulness.

"Are you okay? You missed dinner, and Roger said you were having a bad time earlier?"

Root muttered something that sounded like it ended in "own business" but Lauren wasn't sure if it was directed at her or at Roger.

"Did Andrew hurt you badly?" she asked, ducking her head to see if she could see Root's face under the pillow, but that only confused her slightly more as it seemed that although Root's knees were pointed outward, her face was toward the wall. It couldn't be comfortable like that.

"M'fine," came the muffled reply.

"I brought you some cake from the dining hall," Lauren said, staring at Root's desk, not entirely certain where to place it. Her coding was still there arranged in neat stacks, and Lauren wasn't really certain where it could go without disrupting the organization, which was the last thing she wanted to do. "I'm going to put it... on the dresser."

"So can we come in or not?" Tina's voice wafted in the door, she was waiting in the hall with Roger in case Root responded poorly to having guests. The query was meant for Lauren but Root responded anyway.

"Uagh!" she pulled the pillow from her face, rolling over and sitting up against the headboard, cross-legged with the pillow now in her lap, arms and phone laid atop it. "Get in here and let's get this over with."

"Get what over with?" Roger asked, as he and Tina entered.

"The third degree. Are you even allowed in here?" she addressed Roger.

"Kinda-sorta?" he replied, "Technically no, but they don't sweat it as long as I'm not alone with any _one_ girl. You know… because gay." Roger pulled up the desk chair, and Tina bounced onto the end of Root's bed without asking. Root sighed and gestured an invitation for Lauren to sit in the space between them.

"Does it hurt?" Lauren reached out unthinkingly toward the bruise on Root's cheek that spread from just in front of her left ear, down along her cheekbone.

"It's fine," she reflexively dodged the touch. "Nothing's broken, and it's not high enough to give me a swell eye. The ones on my shins are way worse."

"We missed you at dinner. If you need us, we'll stay with you, one of us all the time," Roger offered. "In case he comes after you again."

"What? No," Root snapped offended, and then sighed at herself as Tina jumped a little. "Sorry. It's just… I don't _need_ that. I'm not scared of him. You see this?" she gestured at herself, vaguely. "This doesn't bother me, and because this doesn't bother me, I don't have any reason to be _scared_ of Andrew... besides which if I hadn't been trying to get him sent to seclusion, I could have kicked his sorry ass."

"Wait, back up… trying to get him sent to seclusion?"

"Yeah I may have… provoked him deliberately," she smiled, "He's a wife stabbing asshole and he was being even more of a dick than usual today… and as we established in anger management," she addressed Roger specifically at this point, "I don't get mad, I get even."

"By getting yourself pummeled?" Tina squeaked.

"Slightly bruised," she corrected, "Really, it's fine. Andrew got dropped back to Level 2. That's… pretty worth it. Seriously if I can't get my own freaking coffee why should he?"

"That is both… brilliant and disturbing," Lauren said.

"Brilliant would be if I managed to get him dropped to Level 1," Root quipped. "But seriously, I probably knocked my _own_ head harder myself than he did."

"Do you want to talk about that or…?" Roger trailed off.

"I'd rather not, actually. Just a part of Alex's new personal quest to tick me off," Root chuckled.

"He kind of seems to be succeeding."

"Hush, traitor," she was only half joking.

"It doesn't do anyone any favors if we're not honest with one another in group," he said, apologetically.

"I would probably be able to appreciate more if you weren't so _very_ wrong."

"Fair enough," Roger conceded. "But I do have to ask… When you said Alex was covering Carmichael's ass… What did you mean?"

"You don't want me to answer that," Root replied. "He's your shrink."

"Yours too."

"Yeah… only because they said if I wanted a different one they'd switch me with Justine. I'm _not_ putting her alone in a room with him."

"I'm trusting this guy with my brain," Roger said, "I think I have a right to know if there's something hinky going on."

"I didn't go after him with the pen till Wednesday night," Root replied, with a little twitch of the nose, leaving Roger to put the rest of the information together.

"But you went into seclusion on Tuesday…"

"Mmhmmm."

"Why?"

Root sighed and shrugged.

"Robin why?"

"Because he can?" Root made a face, "To make a point? To break me? You'd have to ask _him…_ because I never got a satisfactory answer, or a single _one_ of the hourly assessments we're supposed to get. Wednesday night McEntire was there like clockwork… but the first 24 hours? Not one. If there had been it wouldn't have lasted past the first check."

"What?" Lauren was scandalized, and Roger was shocked silent. "I'm pretty sure that's _illegal_."

"And terrible therapy," Root added.

"I'm really glad I switched to Lawson," Tina murmured from the far end of the bed.

"There has to have been a _reason_ ," Roger scowled, "I know you don't like him… any of you, but that's just… no. Take it back… it's a lie, right?"

"See this is why I didn't want to tell you," Root chastised.

"That couldn't happen here _…_ at county sure, but not Ridge Stone. That's cruel. That's… that's _abuse_."

"It won't happen to anyone else," Root assured him, with a slightly sad tight lipped smile, "Gloria and Dr. McEntire won't let it. I'm sure."

"Don't do that," Roger said. "Don't smile like that that."

"Like what?"

"Like that smile adults use they're telling children that everything will be ok even though they know that it won't," he replied. "The kind of smile that says, I know something really terrible that you don't know, but I don't want you to worry."

"I'm… _not_ actually sure," she admitted with some difficulty, " _You_ were wrong, but Alex is right. _If_ there's anything I am afraid of… **_if_ ** … it's the possibility of _that_ happening again, and for even longer. It's pretty crazy making being in there for hours and hours a time without any interaction. He wasn't kidding when he called it solitary confinement."

The room sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, Root became very interested in the hem of the pillowcase. Lauren sat stone still. Roger picked at his cuticles. Tina traced the woodgrain of the foot board.

"You wanna pass me that cake?" Root asked after a while, breaking the silence, "I _did_ miss dinner."

"Oh, yeah sure," Roger got up and traversed the short distance to the dresser and back in less than five total steps, passing her the plate.

"I have no idea why," she admitted, tucking into the vanilla cake but avoiding the chocolate frosting, "but lately with the stomach stuff from the taper… all I really want to eat is stuff in the pastry family. Cake, cookies, donuts… whatever… and milk… vanilla pudding or tapioca. Just… all the calorie dense white food in existence. Isn't milk supposed to be worse for nausea than other things?"

"Meds do weird shit," Tina shrugged, "Have they said anything about what they're planning once you're done with the taper?"

"No… and I haven't asked. I'm really hoping the answer is 'nothing' but I couldn't be that lucky. They're going to cram some other unnecessary chemicals into me for sure."

"Sometimes the meds _do_ help," Roger said.

"I don't doubt that," Root assured him. "It's just genetics. Crazy's not the only thing that runs in the family, so does not responding to medication."

"It's been like… 10 years though since your mom died, right?"

"What's that to do with anything?"

"Medical science marches on," Roger said. "Maybe they found something new since then."

"Maybe. Right now I'm just hoping that whatever's next it doesn't feel this horrible to come off when I get the heck out of this place."

"Yeah but… that's a long ways off don't you think?" Tina asked.

"I hope not. I swear the longer I stay here the worse I feel. No computers. No internet. No anything slightly interesting. No respect. No freedom. No standing on grass or dirt or whatever… the earth. I did _not_ think I'd ever miss that, but here we are. I would kill for a ten minute walk outside."

"You would kill for ten _cents_."

"It's a _saying_ , and no I wouldn't. I'd either do it for free because they deserve it or for something on the order of seven to eight figures: no questions asked," Root smiled into her cake, getting a slightly perverse kick out of knowing that she could come right out and say things like that and it would just be written off as Robin's quirky morbid sense of humor. Tina and Roger obliged with a giggle, though Lauren didn't seem to get the joke. "In all seriousness, I don't know how you guys put up with this treatment as long as you have."

"Well for starters, I acknowledge that I have an illness that needs treatment."

"Not that kind of _treatment._ I mean, the way they treat us… not medically, but just treating us like crap… like we're all a bunch of 11 year olds. It's patronizing and demoralizing, and there they always are with those little clipboards making reports on _everything_. Robin played checkers today, engaging in positive social behaviors and problem solving skills. Robin went to bed without brushing her teeth, negative hygiene behavior. Robin played Andrew like a fiddle, negative social behaviors, manipulation and recklessness behavior. They're making up the rules of the game as they go along. I swear I had more freedom in _jail_."

"It's not a game," Tina said, "It's a hospital. I mean… getting out isn't going to help you if you're still sick, so why not just try to get better?"

"I _am_ trying to get better. I'm working on the whole homicidal ideation thing… but really aside from some of those CBT exercises, none of the groups I gotta drag my ass to every day are going to help with that. I don't think about killing people because I'm _angry_. I don't _have_ any trauma. The rest of everything is arts and crafts time really… it's a waste of time."

"Well there's other things you could get better at," Roger said, "Like the friend thing."

"If I'm not living up to your expectations Roger, no one's making you stick around."

"I mean… letting people _help_ you… trusting people. Trauma group can be good for trust issues."

"I will never understand why some people insist on treating trust and reliance as a valuable skill. If the world ends tomorrow, I'll be surviving it, because I know how to handle myself. _That_ 's a valuable skill."

"Yeah but it's easier to face life's problems with other people."

"Other people _are_ life's problems… present company nominally excepted."

"Nominally? Really?" Tina snapped. "Why are you like this? What the hell happened to you Robin?"

"Nothing," Root shrugged, "No one did _anything_."

"You know no one is buying that right?" Tina said, "You're in Trauma Recovery Group. We all know something traumatic happened, or you wouldn't me there."

"No, you all know they _think_ something traumatic happened. They're all hung up on the stupid murdered friend thing. I wasn't there. It didn't happen to me. Did it suck not having a friend any more? Of course. Is that _trauma_? No. They're not really very good at determining that kind of thing. Half the things other people are in that group for aren't even really that bad."

"Like what?"

"Like boo-hoo Shannon had to do all the cooking and cleaning and looking after her younger brother. Oh heaven forbid."

"It started when she was _nine_ Robin."

"Her father went to work every day; he paid all the bills on time. She was just picking up the inevitable slack that comes of not having a mother. What, was he supposed to get them to the bus and get to work at the _same_ time?"

"I don't know… but it still sucked for Shannon…"

"What about Cindy? She didn't have to _do_ anything. She just whines about her mother being _sad_ all the time."

"She was depressed and completely emotionally unavailable, and she was never ever good enough to make it okay."

"She was _sick_. Everything else is Cindy reading things into it."

"You might feel differently if you'd had to go through things like that yourself," Roger said.

"I have!" Root laughed. "That's how I _know_ it's not the big deal they make it out to be. You don't get an award for handling the _basics_ of living. The world doesn't care. It doesn't do anyone any favors to feed into their illusion that they deserve pity or recognition just for doing the things that everyone has to do just to live."

"I'm sorry… we… didn't know," Tina murmured.

"Right because the crazy lady who flips out in the supermarket is really going to be capable of doing the dishes and paying the bills and taking care of your emotional boo-boos."

"Starting when? How old were you?" Roger asked.

"No idea," Root shrugged. "As far back as I can remember."

"Was she ever able to… you know… do mom stuff?" Lauren inquired.

"Must have been at some point," Root replied, as if it was the dumbest question she'd ever heard. "I'm not _dead_ , and I sure as hell didn't change my own diapers and make my own bottles. I'm advanced, but not _that_ advanced."

"Oh Robin…."

"How many times do I have to remind you that I absolutely hate pity?"

"It's not pity, it's… sympathy."

"Yeah, hate that too. Don't make a big thing about this. It's _nothing_."

"It's not nothing though… I mean kids _need_ adults."

"Clearly not, or I wouldn't be sitting here," Root replied, "By the very _definition_ of need, one does not survive with needs that weren't met. I handled it on my own, because I could. I can. Because clearly I did _not_ need anyone. No one else ever did _anything_. But here I am. Because I can handle my own self, and I'd just as soon get out of here and get back to that."

 

* * *

 

"Hey Alex," Terry looked up from her book as he approached her in the break room. "What's up?"

"I was just wondering if you had anything I could use in my group."

"Always… was there something in particular you need?"

"I'm trying to get an accurate read on what's going on with Robin. It's always hard with the clients who have _hidden_ anger… you can't just ask them what's pissing them off because the answer is always that they're not angry, you know? I was just wondering if there was anything in the writing assignments I could use."

"Pretty much all the journaling assignments come back as essays on the worthlessness of humanity… in MLA format. She's got the vocabulary of a postgraduate, and the composition skills of a high schooler. Makes for an interesting read. We're an evolutionary dead end you know."

"Are we now…"

"Yup. Also the bystander effect is demonstrable proof that widespread altruism is a myth. Apparently true altruism exists in some people as a _defect_ , but is not an inherent part of the human psyche. The rest of us are unconsciously pursuing selfish goals disguised as altruism, for example charity is a means of controlling the less fortunate. There's also one on the phone God, from when I asked they to write about their faith… she has a plan. It will improve humanity… Robin doesn't know what the plan actually _is_ yet, but it will be good because it was made by a perfect computer and not a flawed human."

"Misanthropy to the max."

"And then some. So I can tell you she's angry **_at_ ** the whole human race, but sadly I can't point to an origin for it, if that's what you're looking for. I'm still working on cracking that nut, but I do think I've hit on something that's chiseling away at her mask slowly.

"Please don't tell me you're on board with Dr. C's break her down and force treatment plan."

"What? No. Is he doing that?" Terry sighed, "Coming at her head on is pretty much the _worst_ idea. I'm sneaking in the side door."

"Like what?"

"Psychodrama. She balked at it at first… like pretty much everyone does. It's weird. But once she acclimated to the idea… Alex she's an _incredible_ actor. She can listen to someone's description of their mother, their teacher, their sister, and _become_ that person, at least, the other clients perception of that person, with scary levels of accuracy. She mirrors and doubles with bizarre levels of insight."

"Uh huh... "

"She's filling in the gaps from somewhere Alex. Good acting is about being truthful in emotion, even if the structure of the scene is a deception. They are not who they say they are, but they're drawing on inner truth to make it believable. Putting her in the role of someone else does an end run around her defenses. It's just a matter of sorting the wheat from the chaff at that point."

"How long till that shows dividends?"

"It already is... just not the ones you're looking for."

"Like what?"

"Like her ambivalence about independence. She guards it like a dog with a bone, but she hates it at the same time. You can actually see some degree of _relief_ when she immerses into a helpless role. It's a chance to indulge that unacknowledged desire to have someone _else_ calling the shots for once, without compromising her self image, because it's just a character in a psychodrama. Makes sense… has to be _exhausting_ never letting anyone help."


	18. Setting Goals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Goals are finally set... and the rest of the staff has finally had it with Dr. Carmichael...

"Alright Robin. I've already talked to Alex," Dr. Carmichael came to sit in his rocking chair at the beginning of their usual Friday session, "do you want to explain yourself?"

"What do you want me to explain. How to pull Andrew's puppet strings?" Root sat cross legged on the couch, looking somewhat pleased with herself.

"What are you _doing_ Robin?" Dr. Carmichael asked frustratedly. "It's as if you're trying to make everyone's job harder."

"You wound me."

"You're a _manipulator_ Robin, and I'm just trying to figure out if it's deliberate, or if you're not even aware that you're doing it."

"I prefer the term Social Engineer," Root replied.

"You're playing games with me, with Andrew, with Alex… likely with every other provider here who is trying to _help_ you. No one is amused. You need to start taking this seriously."

"It's your game," Root contested. "And you're sore because I'm _not_ playing it."

"Then what _were_ you doing setting off possibly the only patient on this unit who's more dangerous than you are."

"Oh, I'm definitely more dangerous than him," Root corrected. "He may have actually stabbed someone, but she's still alive. When… if… I ever stab someone they'll be _very_ dead."

"And you provoked him into attacking you _why_? And the _truth_ please Robin."

" _Truthfully_? It seemed like people were forgetting what a menace he is. I may be more dangerous, but he's more volatile, foul, ill-mannered. He really is quite a good example of Bad Code."

"No one was forgetting what he's like Robin. They were treating him commensurate with the behavior he's been exhibiting. He's been improving, and you deliberately set him back."

"There's no improving people like Andrew. He's just doing what he's told to earn privileges."

"Is that what it is? You didn't like that he had a higher privilege level than you?"

"Everyone has a higher privilege level than me. It's remarkably easy to make 3."

"And yet you haven't," Dr. Carmichael pointed out, condescendingly.

"Because I'm not jumping through hoops on command like a chihuahua in a tutu," she replied with a suppressed smile. "I'm not _playing_ your stupid little games. That's the real problem you're having. You say I'm playing games and need to take this seriously, but really what you mean is that I need to start playing your game, by your rules… and that's never going to happen. I can and will outlast you Doctor."

"You're cutting off your nose to spite your face Robin."

"Not really. I've got friends who can bring me coffee, no real interest in extra access to the art room, and what would I do with an extra weekly phone pass when the only one I want to talk to on the phone, calls in to me, on this? Why go through that humiliation for so little gain?"

"Humiliation? What humiliation?"

"The ridiculous way they announce earned levels in morning goals meeting. It smacks of kindergarten. When you are five, you relish being praised for tying your shoes. If someone praises you again for that at fifteen, or thirty, it can only be seen as _treating you like a five year old_."

"No one here is getting praised for tying their shoes."

"Of course we're not. We're not allowed _shoelaces_. It's a metaphor. You see it all the time in here, praising people, regardless of actual capability, for ridiculously small achievements. That inherently assumes a level of capability, or lack thereof, at which these things are remotely difficult. It's demeaning."

"Other people's goals may seem like small achievements to you but-"

"That's other people. Two days ago the art therapy group lead thanked me for pushing in my chair when I got up, like I'm six. This morning one of the kitchen staff praised me for always bringing back my tray. Last week the music therapist told me I danced like a prima ballerina," she laughed and rolled her eyes.

"And you told her you were no such thing."

"Oh you heard about that."

"She says that's a lie, that you've had a lot of training, and you can't shake the muscle memory enough to convince her otherwise."

"It takes far more than eight years of training to become a prima ballerina… and it was never really my thing. It's just something I used to do after school over _twenty years ago_ . A little residual muscle memory does not a dancer make. She was being ridiculous… and _patronizing_."

"You're just too good for all this, huh?" he says. "Above us mere mortals."

"Or, you know, just a regular independently functioning adult human who's sick of being treated like a toddler."

"You're not being treated like a toddler Robin, you're being treated like someone with a mental illness. You're _sick_. You need help. Until you accept that… until you give yourself over to accepting that this is for your own good, you're not going to be able to get any better."

"I'm doing the work. I know Danny reports on the worksheets from CBT. We've met twice now and I haven't gone for your pens again. I'm going to all my groups. In what way am I not accepting treatment?"

"You've already _admitted_ to Dr. McEntire that you believe you've inherited your mother's condition, and yet you continue to insist on ignoring it as a factor in your present situation, _and_ you continue to deliberately mask your symptoms making it difficult for anyone to get a read on how severely and in what ways you are personally affected. That means that there are two different things that could be going on here. Either you understand and have internalized that you have an illness and are hiding and disguising behaviors and beliefs you _know_ to be symptomatic in an effort to get out of here faster. Or after observing your mother's life and the way people treated her, you're using a rubric to determine your behavior, to disguise your illness without actually feeling like any of it is truly a problem."

"Or three, I understand and have internalized that I have an condition that neither you nor anyone here is _capable_ of helping with, and maybe _it's_ weaker in me, or _I'm_ stronger than my mother but either way I'm coping with it just fine on my own… not masking, _coping…_ and I don't want to be stuck here any longer than necessary with people trying to shave me down to fit a round hole, so to speak."

"You see yourself as a square peg?"

"No. My mother was a square peg. I'm just… a little elliptical. If I were square maybe I'd belong here, but I'm not and I don't."

"Well then, have you considered that maybe, if you're comfortable with your situation, if you think it's only _a little elliptical_ and you're truly not _as_ ill as your mother, then if you opened up and let us actually understand you we'd end up agreeing that you're fine? Maybe you're afraid to share your true self for nothing."

"Possibly, but there's no way to asses that without taking a risk, and I can't afford to chance the possibility that you'll make another incompetent blunder, in the name of _healing_. It's not as if you haven't messed that up before," she held the phone up just under her chin, screen facing her chest, protectively.

"So, if I'm parsing this correctly, you're trying to avoid revealing your present methods of coping with your condition so they won't be taken from you like the phone was. You have everything under control, in your eyes, but maybe _we_ won't like how you do it, and you're not willing to chance the loss of control that abandoning those methods might result in, because you don't believe that our methods would _work_."

"Right now you're coming dangerously close to prying into territory where I'm going to be forced to lie to you… or stonewall… and then we're going to wind up with you getting frustrated and throwing your weight around, and me responding with more _homicidal ideation_ , and no one wants that."

"I appreciate you telling me that." Dr. Carmichael smiled, "I know that probably sounds strange to you, because I'm guessing you meant that as a threat, but choosing not to lie to me is a good decision on your part. Can we make it a goal that you try and make more good choices like that?"

"Please don't talk to me like I'm a mental deficient," Root replied, with disgust.

"Okay Robin," Dr. Carmichael scolded, "You have been here long enough to know this is the kind of language that's used in therapy, and I want you to think about the fact that your request, whether you meant it that way or not, carries with it the implication that every other patient here is _mentally deficient_. That's… really very insulting."

"Can we at least dispense with _thank you for making good choices_ platitudes at least in here? None of those _other_ patients are here, and however useful that kind of thing in managing people who are… _genuinely debilitated_ ," she made a careful substitution of terms, "to me it just comes off as yet another form of denigration. I'm a fully functional adult capable of independent living and I would prefer to be spoken to as such. "

"Ok. I can do that. The kid gloves are coming off Robin," the doctor's tone became far firmer than it had been, completely losing all undertones of understanding or placation. "I know you were threatening to lie or kill me as a cheap sneaky means of controlling the direction of the conversation, but you only played _yourself_. Threatening to lie _is_ a crap behavior but it's a step up from _actually_ lying, and you just showed me you're capable of taking that step. You raised the bar of expectation and made more work for yourself, because now I'm not going to accept anything less from you. Well done."

"Was that so hard?" Root asked, looking more satisfied than the doctor felt she ought based on what was said.

"Also you've been blowing off setting goals, which is not going to fly anymore. No goals, no discharge. You're not going anyplace until you start making and meeting goals. Now I'm offering to make one of those goals something I expect you to do anyway, because I don't think you give enough of a crap to do it otherwise. So how about you don't shoot yourself in the foot, which is what you'll be doing if you don't agree to make this a goal."

"To be clear, you _want_ me to threaten people instead of lying to them?" Root smirked.

"If you want me to treat you like a fully functioning adult, it would help if you stop playing dumb. You know what I'm asking of you. You have a very bad habit of lying, and you need to break that habit. When someone asks something that triggers your need to lie, you tell them you can't answer without lying, and we back off the question… for now."

"Triggers," Root scoffed. "It's a choice, not a symptom. It's just easier to lie than deal with the way you guys get when you don't get the answers you want."

"Then show us that. Quit taking the easy road and deal with _the way we get_. Make that choice."

"This is gonna get old fast, but you're the shrink. If it gets me closer to getting out of here I'll do it."

"Goal," the doctor spoke as he wrote, "Robin will become comfortable opening up to her treatment team about when subject matter is too uncomfortable for her to be truthful, instead of fabricating." Root rolled her eyes at the language and shrugged. "Okay, we're going to need to come up with at least two more goals. Any ideas?"

"Don't set Andrew off again?"

"That's a little too narrow, but it's a good place to start. Notes from Alex: Robin does not openly express anger, but instead finds ways to covertly gain retribution on those that incite it."

"He's not wrong. I don't get mad, I get even." Root grinned. "You've seen that first hand."

"This is typified by the way she engineered a confrontation with Andrew, to her own disadvantage, as a means of getting him into trouble. She needs to work on owning and expressing anger instead of secretly sabotaging the targets of her ire," the doctor continued to read from the notes, ignoring her interjection. "So there's another thing you're probably going to have to do anyway. Let's make a goal."

"How does that one go in psychobabble?" Root asked chidingly.

"Goal: Robin will learn to recognize, accept and verbally express repressed anger, and resist the urge to sublimate it in covert sabotage of the people she is incised with."

"This is going to end _so_ poorly," Root sighed dramatically. "Why you would _want_ someone to be more angry is quite a ways beyond me, and the result would likely be the same. Do you really think Andrew would respond with less violence to someone being confrontational with him than he did when I set him off on purpose? I could get _hurt_ you know, and you'd be responsible," she pouted.

"You got hurt doing it your way anyway," Dr. Carmichael indicated the yellowing bruise down the side of her face. "And that doesn't seem to have deterred you at all."

"I'll try it," Root shrugged, "I'm not making any guarantees on this one yet."

"Well that's what makes it a good goal. It's going to take some _work…_ now while we're on the subject of this," he indicated Root's bruise again, "I can think of another goal I'd like to see… similar to the last."

"What's that?"

"You don't just sabotage other people. You sabotage _yourself_ , sometimes at the same time… which maybe I could play off as you just being willing to endure misfortune in the name of revenge, but you've also managed to have multiple _accidents_ all on your own, fell in the shower, tripped in the hall twice, and tipped your chair in the dining hall."

"They warned me about that all through high school. Four on the Floor Robin... and go figure it didn't actually come true till thirty three..."

"You've _arranged_ to get stuck with long tedious tasks other people actively avoid. You can say just the wrong thing at just the right time to get sent to the hall during group. You're… _collecting_ misfortune. Could we make a goal to stop that?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Do you have an objection?"

"Instead of lying, you want me to refuse. Instead of getting even, you want me to tell people they're jerks. Instead of what _you_ view as self sabotage, you offer no alternative, and any alternative I could suggest… would not be in my best interest to share."

"Self sabotage or not, whatever it is you're getting out of this you're _not_ going to be getting it anymore Robin. If you insist on continuing to seek misfortune, no one on staff is going to be party to that anymore. You're not going to be _allowed_ to monopolize the unpleasant tasks anymore, and the group instructors are not going to fall for your bait and send you out to the hall."

"I suppose I could arrange to stick solely to _accidents_ , in that case, or are you also going to decline to treat my injuries?"

"You really don't value your bodily integrity, do you Robin?" the doctor sighed, defeatedly.

"Of course I do, insomuch as everything remains functional," Root replied, "I'm kind of glad I was catatonic through the entire, no using your left arm, thing. Being down a limb is a real impediment to… everything."

"But pain is no object? Cuts, scrapes, contusions, anything that doesn't disable you, you don't mind? Do you realize that's not normal? Most people don't tolerate that kind of thing."

"Most people are wimps."

"Ok, well I'm going to put it down anyway. When you decide you're ready to stop screwing yourself over, try asking for… _whatever_ it is you're getting out of this… instead of cutting off your nose to spite your face." he picked up the pen again, "Robin will express and ask for assistance with her needs, in lieu of manipulating others to fulfill them unknowingly by inflicting deliberate misfortune on herself."

"No. Robin won't," Root replied, playfully, taking the situation less seriously than she should.

"Yes she will," Dr. Carmichael replied, "If she ever wants to leave this place."

"She won't because she's _not doing that in the first place_. Besides which that threat is never going to work on me. When _she_ wants me out of here, I will be, and _until_ she wants me out of here, I won't be. It's not up to you."

"Everything is up to me Robin. That's kind of the arrangement here. I know you think I'm only the... 43rd? smartest person in the building, but at some point you're going to have to deal with the fact that I'm the psychiatrist and you are the patient."

"I don't think there's ever been any question of that."

"Isn't there? Because every time you walk through that door, it's a power struggle. You dodge my questions, duck responsibility, and throw everything we're trying to do for you in my face."

"I'm ungrateful, right? That's what we in the computing field call a _known issue_. Never could accept a hand out. Never plan to either."

"At some point, I _am_ going to figure out what it takes to _make_ you understand that this is for your own good, that this pride… this _arrogance_ of yours isn't more important than getting better."

"Or at some point you'll learn to play by _my_ rules," Root smirked. "It would make your life so much easier… but I suppose your pride, _your arrogance_ , is more important to you than being any good at your job."

"It's not about pride Robin, it's about _helping_ you."

"If you're the _sane_ one here, and I'm just the crazy person, then shouldn't _you_ be the one making concessions, coming down to my level? If I'm ill I certainly can't be expected to be able to meet you at _your_ level."

"Are you conceding that?"

"Are _you_ denying it? You can't have it both ways Doc."

"But you can? You're both well enough that you don't actually need to be here, and sick enough that you can't be expected to participate in your own treatment?"

"I don't need to have it both ways. If even _one_ of those two things is true, you're going about this all wrong."

"Again, I'm the psychiatrist. You are the patient. You don't get to tell me how to do my job."

"I don't know how you can help _anyone_ with this attitude."

"Because my other patients come willing to do what I ask of them Robin. They _know_ they have a problem and they want help. You don't want my help, do you?"

"No… I really don't."

 

* * *

 

"Gloria can I speak with you a moment?" Dr. Carmichael approached the charge nurse in the dining room during dinner.

"Of course Ron, what can I do you for?"

"I want to move Robin up to Level 3, can you make that announcement tonight at wind down?"

"Oh that's fantastic news!"

"Well… perhaps," he gestured for her to keep her voice down, "but I also want to warn you that it… might not go well, so you might want to have a few extra techs on hand… and be prepared to revoke the level if she makes a scene."

"And… why would that happen?"

"Well she's somewhat averse to public praise."

"Oh well… we could just forgo announcing it and I'll just tell her privately instead."

"That would defeat the purpose."

"Which is?" Gloria glared skeptically.

"To make it clear to Robin that participation in the achievement and reward system is non-optional. She's been deliberately refusing to gain levels because she finds the whole system to be _beneath_ her. We can't have someone thinking they're above the system Gloria. Once she realizes she can't escape it by staying at the same level forever, maybe we'll finally see some progress."

"I don't think I'm comfortable participating in this… course of action," Gloria replied. "I'm not going to be a party to any punitive use of the level system, even if the level change is upward."

"I get it… you don't want to be the bad guy. You can delegate it to one of the techs if you want. It's not important who does it… only that it gets d-"

"My ears are burning," Root said from behind him.

"Robin… I was having a discussion with _Gloria_."

"About me. I heard," she very deliberately poured her single-serve milk carton down his front.

"AUGH!"

"Ooopsies."

"What the hell Robin?!?"

"Gee, I guess I probably shouldn't be getting any new levels today, should I? That would seem really unfair to anyone who saw this..." she said, voice too low to be heard by anyone but Gloria and Dr. Carmichael. "Sorry about your tie," she pushed between them, handing the milk carton to a flummoxed Gloria on her way out of the cafeteria.

"A little help here Gloria?" Dr. Carmichael stood awkwardly with his arms slightly raised trying to stem the run-off.

"Mm-mm, you deserved that," Gloria turned her back, "You get your own damn paper towel."

 

* * *

 

"Anita!" Gloria hurried down the hall at an accelerated pace, after the doctor who had purse and umbrella in hand and was making for the elevator. "I need to talk to you!"

Dr. McEntire startled a little and turned around, convinced solely by the pace at which Gloria was moving that this was an important matter. Gloria ambled… she didn't generally run outside a Code 10.

"It's about Ronald."

"Why is it _always_ about Ronald… what's he done this time?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol. Now I get to write everyone getting on Ron's case. :D
> 
> OT: Any thoughts, prayers, good juju available, please send it the way of my BFF. Yet another facility is on the brink of turfing her, (not for her behavior, she's compliant! it's for her chronic medical condition) and this one's the best place she's been so far, so any transfer would be to a crappier hospital. :( There's a meeting this morning to discuss MAYBE letting her stay... and yeah... she needs this so bad. <3
> 
> EDIT (later same day): Thank you to anyone who sent the previously requested prayers, juju, thoughts etc. Friend gets to stay put!!!!


	19. Detoxification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root decides she's done with the Diazapam, and Dr. McEntire decides to detoxify Dr. Carmichael...

"Rhetta was worried about the taper on Wednesday, but symptoms seem to have leveled off since then, so I'm willing to order another cut to her dosage," Dr. Leipman, the Unit Psycopharmacologist said, absently, addressing the microcassette recorder in his hand instead of Root. Most of the time he spoke as if the patients couldn't hear him, like they were dogs, or plants… which irritated the shit out of Root.

"Bigger than last time?" she asked hopefully, "I mean… So if you keep cutting it by such small amounts we'll never get there. When does this end?"

"The closer we get to the end the smaller the reductions. It's a matter of percentages not absolute values," he replied, without looking her way, immersed in whatever he was scribbling on his clipboard.

"When?"

"Should be done by the second or third week of July. It could have been longer, but the duration of treatment was not all that long so we're able to taper down quicker."

"You're kidding me."

"These things take a while," he shrugged, now back fully to her as he flipped through a file holder on the wall.

"These _things_ are taking longer than the time I was on this stuff because I actually needed it. That was three weeks. It's been three now doing this. Why can't we speed this up at all?"

"The withdrawal symptoms will only increase if-"

"But it will be over faster, right?"

"It would not be wise," he turned around and his eyes actually alighted on Root for a moment, "Think of how badly you felt on Wednesday." He used the second person for the first time in the appointment.

"Is it going to kill me still?"

"Probably not. We've passed the point where there's a likelihood of _deadly_ seizure," he admitted, finally giving Root his full attention. "As you said you've been taking it less than two months..."

"Then what's the hold up? At this rate I'll have been taking it for," Root paused for mental calculation "...two and a half months by the time I'm off, when I only needed it for three weeks."

"I think you underestimate the effects that an early drop off may will have on you."

"I think _you_ underestimate just how much I want this _over with_."

"Robin…"

"Medically speaking, what's the biggest cut we can make at this point, without me falling into a coma or some bullshit like that."

"I don't think you're ready for-"

"I'm not asking your opinion, I'm asking for a fact," Root replied firmly.

"Factually… at this dosage… it's possible…" he trailed off, reluctantly.

"What's possible."

"It's possible to jump off completely," the doctor had to nearly force the words out of his mouth.

"Then I'm done," Root announced, hopping down off his exam table. "Court order says I have to take anything you deem _necessary_. We've already established it's no longer psychologically necessary… and now it's not physiologically necessary either. No more."

"What you've been going through these past weeks… that's really only a fraction of what you're setting yourself up for."

"Will it last any _longer_ now than if we jump off three or four weeks from now?"

"No but it will be _worse_."

"I'll take that risk," Root walked out the door, "You should let Linda know why I won't be showing up for meds anymore," she added.

 

* * *

 

"Oh… I can come back later," Dr. Leipman balked at the door to Dr. Carmichael's office, seeing it was fairly full.

"No, please," Dr. Carmichael said, looking for an out from the meeting he was presently in, "If it's important, we can certainly reconvene this at a later time."

"Oh well… it's about Robin."

Dr. Carmichael slumped back in his chair defeatedly with a groan, wiping his face with his hands.

"Join the club," Alex said, "I'd tell you to pull up a chair, but we're standing room only at this point."

"You're all here about-"

"Yup."

"We're having an intervention," Gloria said, grimly.

"Quick catch up," Danny said, as Dr. Leipman took a place next to him, leaning on a file cabinet. "Anita's trying to teach Ron the first rule of holes."

"Huh?"

"When you're in one, _stop digging_ ," Terry said, from the other side of Danny.

"They want me to _capitulate_ to her!" Dr. Carmichael protested. "Am I the _only_ person in this entire hospital she hasn't managed to manipulate yet?"

"This isn't Robin's doing Ron," Dr. McEntire said, from the front center chair in front of his desk. "You may not be able to see it but you're clearly out of control. You started off by misusing seclusion, but things have not improved from there. You're viewing your patient as an adversary, and that's not going to work. You dismiss any concerns that one of the team leads brings to you. You don't listen to anyone's recommendations, and now I hear you're trying to enlist other staffers to assist you in publicly humiliating her in front of the other patients. What _possible_ therapeutic value could that have?"

"I explained that to Gloria already" he replied, "when I asked her to help! Robin thinks this whole situation, this whole hospitalization is beneath her. We need to get her down in the trenches with the rest of us if there's going to be any work done!"

"You're engaging in a pissing contest with a grandiose patient," Gloria corrected. "And she's better at it than you are. You are literally never going to win."

"Not with all of you working against me I won't. You realize that _until_ she can be made to shed her superiority complex, we can't even _start_ to work on the rest of her underlying problems?"

"Really because I'm pretty sure I've been making progress," Terry said, "Anyone else?"

Alex, Danny, Gloria, and Jerry all raised their hands along with Yvette, the Music and Movement lead, and Grant, the Art Therapist.  

"Again, why is Jerry even here?" Dr. Carmichael asked, "You're just a _tech_."

"I'm getting nowhere," said Dana, the Trauma Recovery group lead. "And I've asked Ron to move her out of my group three times… and he won't."

"That would be allowing her to dictate her treatment via bad behavior," Dr. Carmichael replied.

"Jerry's here because he gets on with her better than any of the other nurses or techs," Gloria said, "and I think the _whole_ of the front line staff would prefer if you didn't say _just_ a tech like it was something to look down on."

"It would save the _rest_ of my group from all her invalidating eye rolling and sighing," Dana protested.

"You're _all_ undermining me at this point," Doctor Carmichael

"We call that a persecution complex," Danny joked.

"Okay okay," Dr. McEntire tried to get the room back in order. "The point here Ron is that you need a new course of action, because the one you're on now can only end in disaster. We need to deescalate the situation, and you need to get on board with that. Now. If I have to I can report the seclusion incident to Dr. Harris… but I don't think you want that."

"Anita… would you _really_ do that to me over an involuntary trouble patient?" Dr. Carmichael asked, "You _know_ what Dr. Harris would do. Do you want to have to take on half of my patients while I'm suspended?"

"I don't. That's the only reason I haven't gone to him yet. We're short staffed as it is. So Ron, _something_ here has to give… and it's going to be you."

"This is ridiculous. You're putting me in the position of having to stop doing what's right for the patient in order to avoid being suspended."

"No, we're telling you that you're _not_ doing what's right for the patient. Your big head is getting in the way.  You're too busy playing one-upmanship to develop anything approaching a good therapeutic relationship. You cannot continue to try and drag Robin where she will not or cannot go. You have to meet her on her level."

"There is no meeting her on her level. She's put herself on a level that is, by definition, _above_ all of us."

"Actually, you know, aside from the whole 'chosen by God' thing I barely see any of the grandiosity," Jerry shrugged. "Mostly it's just subconscious condescension… ignore it and it _stays_ subconscious."

"Oh no, it's entirely conscious," Danny corrected, "It's just that she magnanimously tolerates the disbelief in the voice and her importance, because we small people cannot be expected to understand. The chosen of God is apparently completely content to play Cassandra, in her mind. Your point _does_ stand however, assuming your point is that meeting her on her level does not in any way require acquiescing to her superiority."

"Pretty much," Jerry nodded.

"Really then… go ahead, educate me." Dr. Carmichael said with a tone that suggested he was only humoring them.

"First of all, if a patient is averse to public praise, then we stop providing it," Gloria said, with no small degree of condemnation. "Not force more upon them. Praise is meant to be a _positive_ reinforcement, not a deterrent."

"We don't just stop doing something because it bothers someone. If we did that the anorexics would never eat."

"No but it's also completely stupid to keep providing a reward which is felt as a penalty instead."

"It's not just public praise," Dr. Carmichael argued, "She's averse to _any_ praise for, and I quote 'ridiculously small achievements' because that sort of thing is for, and again I quote ' _mental deficients_.' You'd have to stop positive reinforcement altogether, and what are you going to do then?"

"Her attitude toward praise isn't all that foreign. I used to see it all the time when I worked at a group home for foster kids. Teenagers mostly." Terry explained, "It's simple. We figure out what is _actually_ difficult for her, what constitutes an actual _achievement_ in her eyes, and remark positively upon _that_ in private and without any exaggeration or flattery."

"Difficult? Like doing as she's told? Because first you'd have to _get_ her to do it."

"Like showing sympathy, owning her needs, or asking for help," Terry deadpanned. "Also not dissimilar to teenagers in the system. Been taking care of themselves so long they have a real hard time letting anyone else parent them."

"That really shouldn't be surprising," Alex said. "From what I gather she was… what did you say?" he addressed Dr. Carmichael.

"Left to her own devices. Allowed to grow up without any respect for rules or authority."

"And that's another thing… the authoritarian angle isn't going to work here," Gloria said. "That's why you don't get anywhere. I've never once had her directly refuse a direction that came with a 'please' attached. She won't do as she's _told_ , but she very frequently does what she's _asked_ , and is fairly polite about begging off of what she doesn't do with some admittedly half baked justification."

"No more petty praise, ask don't order…" Dr. Carmichael seemed bored. "This all sounds great for keeping her behaved on the unit, but that just puts her in a holding pattern. Are we trying to make another Andrew?"

"No we're trying to rebuild trust… which _you_ destroyed. With trust we get cooperation. With cooperation we can make progress."

"To what ends? She's clearly quite content to… well… to remain ill. You remember what happened when she was separated from the phone."

"That's… pretty much the _last_ thing on the list of things to tackle. I know you see the delusion as the root of the problem, a fully organic manifestation of her underlying condition, but I think the rest of us are in agreement that the organic condition is a complication, but root of the problem is actually trauma."

"We are not in agreement," Dana interrupted, "and I'm the Trauma Recovery group lead. The whole thing with the kidnapped friend? That's a huge bundle of anger… that's Alex's problem not mine. I've got vulnerable people in my group that need protecting."

"Including Robin. It's not like you don't have to deal with one-upmanship and trauma comparing all the time Dana. My trauma's worse than your trauma, you're whining and my pain is more real than yours... yadda yadda."

"Except she's adamant she has no trauma Alex. One-upmanship I could deal with, a bunch of silent eye rolling and pulling faces is a lot harder to deal with."

"Okay it's not exactly the same as what you usually have… it's more: It happened to me and I don't think it's trauma, you're whining, my pain isn't real and neither is yours… yadda yadda."

"I will grant you that witnessing a kidnapping, that later turns out to end with death is pretty horrific, and worse when you're close to the victim, but I also see where she's coming from when she says there's a difference between a loss and a trauma."

"Even putting aside the loss," Danny said, "the whole living in a small town with a guy you know rapes and murders little girls but whom no one is willing to protect you from because he's considered to be above reproach, has got to be terrifying."

"Wait what?" Dana screwed up her face. "Why was that not on the cheat sheet?"

"It _says_ she was disbelieved for about 20 years regarding what she saw," Dr. Carmichael said defensively. "It's there."

"I mean why was it not on the cheat sheet that the child raping murderer was a well regarded member of the community. There's a world of difference between knowing the face of a stranger who committed murder and then never seeing them again, and knowing it's _someone you know_ who lives in your town, that you could encounter at any time, and whom everyone has made it clear they won't suspect if _you_ go missing. That's kind of a _'the call is coming from inside the house_ ' kind of detail to leave out. That takes it from a thing that happened one night, to a thing that happened for 20 years."

"Six. He died six years later," Dr. Carmichael corrected, "which she is scary-happy about whenever it comes up."

"Was he murdered?" Grant asked.

"Presumably. She says it was a drug deal that went bad. We can infer that means murder? Why do you ask?"

"An assignment we had a bit back… I thought she was being contrary… or trying to play up the homicidal ideation again, but maybe she really _did_ draw: the time in your life when you were happiest."

"What was it?"

"A blonde girl watching a guy laying on the ground bleeding from several wounds to the abdomen…"

"That is soooo fucked up," Yvette remarked.

"Explains the homicidal ideation some though… given there was a situation where someone getting murdered actually felt good, for an understandable reason."

"Who's the little blonde girl?"

"The dead friend maybe?"

"We're getting off topic," Dr. McEntire corralled the conversation once more, "The point is that we need to rebuild the trust, because she can't accept help without admitting weakness, and can't admit weakness while she still feels like that would invite more harm."

"Like when your cat pretends it isn't injured out of an obsolete instinct to not get picked off by a hawk?" Terry asked,

"Same principal, yes."

"It's not obsolete if it's an outdoor cat." Danny said.

"Who keeps outdoor cats anymore?" Alex interjected. "That's just asking for them to get hit by a car."

"Can the feline care debate please be handled at another time?" Dr. McEntire was getting increasingly frustrated with the tangents. "Is everyone clear on what's going on here? None is giving any more petty praise, everyone is asking, not ordering… she's _staying_ in your group Dana. You have more information now… make it work. Courses of action?"

"I'm going to keep after the whole, uncovering hidden anger thing," Alex said. "We won't be able to get at the fear behind the anger, till we get at the anger."

"I've been having good luck getting her to feel things by taking on other roles in psychodrama," Terry said, "I thought she'd balk at anything that hits too close to home, but I think she recognizes that balking would tip her hand… and thinks I won't notice in the context of the psychodrama."

"Good… keep at that."

"But I don't know what to do with her writing assignments, however. Any ideas?"

"Try fiction," Grant said, "Let her distance herself from the narrative."

"Not a bad idea."

"I'll ease up off the worksheets she's been refusing," Danny said, "and focus on the homicidal ideation and anger for now. She's always saying she doesn't need the other sheets, and maybe I'm banging my head on the wall with that since she's not willing to admit to emotions that could be perceived as a weakness yet."

"I'm curious to know if the other art projects were saying things I didn't realize," Grant mused, "can we get together for 15 minutes each week sometime between Monday first block and Wednesday first block and see if anyone has a clue? I might be able to get her more involved in the discussion portion if I have a better idea what things represent."

"Like what?"

"Well the first thing she produced was this weird triangle thing in response to a prompt about impossibility…"

"It's a fractal. A shape that's mathematically impossible to draw." Dr. Carmichael said, garnering a few appraising glances. "She explained it when I confronted her about not doing the assignment she was given."

"And home is a black-grey canvas, with a purple outline, and a little yellow line in the upper left."

"Figures that would be something abstract," Gloria shrugged, "She doesn't _have_ a home."

"Purple outline?" Jerry asked, "what shade of yellow, kind of a gold?"

"I suppose… why?" Grant said.

"Home is her _computer_. I once heard her explaining to Chuck about the purple and gold skin she put on her Unix."

"Unix?" Gloria asked.

"Operating system, like Windows or Mac… I'm not really sure how it works. It's a geek thing. But presumably she painted one of those windows computer geeks pull up where it's all black and they type things in and hack the pentagon or whatever."

"A command window," Danny said. "What? I know how to run checkdisk and configure my DNS… that's all. It saves hassle to try that stuff before calling tech support… especially the DNS."

"You use Unix?" Jerry asked.

"Windows has them too."

"Oh."

"Okay that's your plan… Yvette."

"I don't have any problems in my group," she shrugged, "perhaps because all the expression is done in the abstract."

"Now hang on," Dr. Carmichael interrupted, "If we're going to be up on one another for mistakes, I've got one for you."

"Me?"

"Ron, please don't be petty," Dr. McEntire sighed.

"I'm not. Yvette's touching a nerve with the ballet thing. It came out in Friday's session."

"Ballet thing?" Gloria asked.

"She has training but she keeps denying it," Yvette explained.

"That's because she stopped dancing 20 years ago," he said, "and she's pretty insistent on leaving the past in the past. You touch on anything too far back and she dismisses it as-"

"Robbie problems," Terry joined in.

"Robbie problems?" Dana asked.

"You go back ten years, and you hit a minefield," Terry explained, "You can get factual information, but that's about it. All the _feelings_ are Robbie Problems.. You go back 20, before the kidnapping... and it's _all_ Robbie. She won't talk about it at all except in the vaguest of terms."

" _Before_ the kidnapping?"

"Mmhmmm…"

"That's strange," she said, "You'd think that area would be pretty safe to talk about since the horrible things hadn't happened yet."

"Well… the one she'll talk about," Alex said.

"Huh?"

"The Uncle insinuated during her initial intake that her mother's illness had a _significant_ impact on Robin's upbringing," Gloria said, "No details available from him, or from her… it's too easily buried and denied since it was all in the family."

"That would explain the dissociation," Danny said.

"You mean the catatonia?" Dana asked.

"Well that too… they tend to be related, but I was referring to an episode that happened about two weeks ago. A dissociative freeze response. Locked up and could barely move. I talked to her about it and she said it hadn't happened in a very long time and wasn't something she was interested in discussing, and that it wouldn't happen again."

"Which is a longhand way of saying 'Robbie Problems"' Terry concluded. "Rob ** _in_** has no history of trauma, because all of those experiences belong to Robb ** _ie_**. She's disowned the past."

"Right and that _kind_ of dissociation," Danny explained, "the instinct to default to _freeze_ instead of engage fight or flight, usually happens when the trauma starts much earlier than 12."

"Thank you Danny, I didn't know something that basic about my own field," Dana replied sweetly… passive aggressively.

"The point is you need to leave off the ballet thing," Dr. Carmichael brought it back around to his statement.  "Ballet is a Robbie thing, and when you head into that territory it just generates hostility."

"You would know about generating hostility," Alex said..

"Do not make me turn this meeting around!" Dr. McEntire exclaimed. "Gloria, Jerry… plans for the floor? Tips about other mines we might not have stepped on yet?"

"Not exactly a mine… kind of a not-mine," Jerry said, "It's a bit counter-intuitive but you get more flies with vinegar…"

"Isn't the whole point of this meeting that you get more with honey?"

"Not that kind of vinegar… I mean she responds well to unvarnished honesty. I picked it up off watching Roger and Lauren. You try regular kid gloves language, like "we don't treat others like that" and she takes you on a ride through the merry land of semantics, you tell her to _quit being an asshole Robin_ and it works… you might try that Dana."

"You're kidding me…"

"He's right about that one actually," Dr. Carmichael said. "I stumbled on that one myself last session. We finally made goals… and then promptly got into another discussion about whose rules we're playing by," he admitted.

"You need to make some concessions there…" Dr. McEntire said.

"In the interest of building trust that we're benevolent and helpful... even though she hates accepting help, I'm going to set Dory on her this weekend," Gloria said, "No one can resist her help when she's in grandma mode."

"I'm not sure if this is a good time to mention it or not," Dr Leipman spoke up, "But she's probably going to to be mostly incapacitated by then."

"Wait… what?"

"That's what I came to talk to you about… she's jumped off the taper. It's not going to start immediately, but within a day or two, she's going to be in a world of pain, and by the weekend, it's going to be pretty unbearable… benzodiazepine detox is never fun."


	20. Tuesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Roger is tough love... and Tina TRIES to help...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever have a chapter that just feels... meh... but you know you need it there so you can get to stuff that comes after? This is that chapter. I had a few things that needed to happen before the withdrawl gets bad... so here they are. Awkwardly. 
> 
> That's only some of the delay though... the rest of it was me reading "Caged Animals," by BlondeQ which you probably should if you haven't. Good stuff.

"How you holding up?" Lauren asked, sitting down at breakfast. It was clear she was talking to Root.

"Fine so far… I don't think it's actually started yet," Root replied, pouring syrup over a fairly massive pile of pancakes, "hence the carboloading. Nausea and Vomiting are a serious potentiality, along with... " She held up a pamphlet that Dr. Leipman had forced on her, reading off it, slightly mockingly, "agitation, anxiety and panic attacks, yeah right, aphasia, blurred vision, chest pain, depersonalization and derealisation, like I don't have enough trouble with dissociative crap already, depression, diarrhea - yuck, dizziness, dry heaves, dry mouth, _electric shock sensations_ , whatever those are, fatigue, flu-like symptoms, headaches, yeah had those since we started the taper, hypertension, hallucinations, who would notice? Increased sensitivity to touch, sound, and smell, insomnia, impaired memory and concentration, _metallic taste_? Mood swings," she snorted, "muscle spasms, nightmares, numbness and tingling, paranoia, photophobia, pins and needles, postural hypotension, tachycardia, tinnitus, aaaand tremors."

"Jesus Christ," Tina said, "Someone remind me of all that if I ever feel tempted to take my PRN more than two days in a row."

"Yeaaaah," Lauren nodded. "I definitely will."

"It's like the DTs on steroids," Roger mused.

"Do steroids give you the DTs?" Tina asked, cheekily.

"You know what I meant."

"Benzodiazapine withdrawal is more hazardous than opioid withdrawal," Root continued to read, "Caffeine may increase seizure risk… so much for coffee for a while. Alcohol is also contraindicated, yadda yadda where would I get alcohol in here anyway? A lot of this seems to assume I've been taking this junk for yeeeeeaaaars though. The acute phase of withdrawal can last between 5 and 90 days. It better not be 90 days… that better be for people who took it waaaaay longer than seven weeks. I mean I know it got me out of the catatonia, but this _sucks_ ," she waved the pamphlet a bit on 'this' and then put it down tucking into her pancakes.

"Thank fuck for SSRIs," Roger added, to an agreement from both Tina and Lauren.

"I heard coming off those isn't fun either," Root said.

"Yeah but it's all headaches and flu-feeling and waaaaay milder than the stuff you just read off," Roger said, "I've run out a few times when I was out… and had to wait a few days for a refill. I still went to work. Not fun… but not not killer either… like… a migraine combined with the flu, but not man-flu."

"Wouldn't any flu you have be man-flu?" Lauren asked.

"Nah… it doesn't count unless you can't go to work. Anyways," he turned his attention back to Root, "there was a time when that stuff was the go-to for any kind of anxiety, but now they try SSRIs first because of the killer withdrawal on benzos."

"To bad they don't have an alternative for catatonia." Root paused, squinting. "Uh… Lauren? What happened to your eyelashes?"

"Oh… I uh… got anxious and pulled them out," Lauren adjusted her glasses self-consciously, "I've got Trich. It could be worse. I do my eyelashes, and sometimes my eyebrows, but those are short, so if I slip up and pull, they're back to normal soonish. Alana pulls the hair out of her scalp. That'll take forever to even out. " she indicated the patchy haired girl at the controlled meals table.

"Trick?"

"T-R-I-C- ** _H._** Trichotillomania. Latin for hair pulling craziness. Not to be confused with Dermatillomania-"

"Skin pulling craziness?"

"Yup. You know Latin?"

"Just enough for to indulge my enjoyment of etymology," Root replied.

"Studying bugs? That's kind of cool."

"Thats entomology, with an 'n.' Etymology, without an 'n,' is the study of _words_. Some basic Latin goes a long way in breaking down your average sesquipedalian. Sesquipedalian from the Latin 'word a foot-and-a-half long,' but that's tongue in cheek, unless you are using a very large font."

"You just like words because you can trip people up with them," Roger chided, "you drive the techs bonkers when you go all rules lawyer on them and try to game the system."

"Gaming the system, _any_ system, is pretty much my strongest skill," Root replied, with the cheeky nose twitch.

 

* * *

 

Roger wasn't ready to let go of 'Robin's language games after breakfast, so they came up again with relative quickness in first group.

"You gotta quit playing word games Robin," he shook his head, "You're always saying you're never angry, and then saying you're annoyed, or irritated by something or someone… which **_is_ ** angry. They're synonyms. I know you know that. You're just being pedantic."

"Well… I should admit that using the word _never_ is overreaching," Root shrugged, "I should have known better than to speak in absolutes, as absolutes are almost never true. Exceptions exist, one of which is apparently that a trained anger management counselor is capable of pulling pure anger out of anyone… like a rabbit out of a hat.

"But, annoyed does not make you throw things. Irritated does not make you punch people. These are lesser, granted _related_ , emotions that don't impair cognition unless they are allowed to _become_ anger. There's nothing to _manage_ with them. Only actual anger makes you stupid."

"What you're describing, feelings that make people stop thinking and start throwing things and hitting people: is rage," Alex said. "There's more to anger than that."

"The trouble with that is that if you want to expand the definition of 'anger' so far that little things like annoyance and irritation are a part of it, then you're blacklisting a huge swathe of the emotional spectrum. I mean… people ought be _allowed_ to be annoyed by things. If you're going to class all of that as anger, wouldn't you want to call this group… I don't know… rage management?"

"Okay, two things: one the goal of anger management is not to _eliminate_ anger, it's to learn how to handle it and _two_ if your definition of anger is constricted solely to rage, we're never going to get anywhere, because I can in fact agree that rage really isn't something you do, at least not with enough regularity to be concerning for these purposes."

"But _rage_ is the one that makes ya'll 'do stupid shit,'" she glanced around the room. "The other stuff… it doesn't have that effect, so what's to manage?"

"I want you to consider that there's more to ' _doing stupid shit_ ' than getting physically aggressive with other people."

"Like skipping group to spite the group lead," Roger reminded her, knowing that ire at Alex was the reason she had skipped last Thursday's session.

"I think I'm allowed to decide not to spend time around people who are deliberately trying to push my buttons," she said to Roger.

"You would know all about pushing buttons,"  Andrew scowled. He had been beyond pissed off when he'd confronted Root at breakfast the previous Wednesday, intending to throw around his newly earned clout while rubbing it in how thoroughly he'd defeated her, only to find out that she had let him win, and wasn't any more intimidated by him after being beaten up, than she was before.

"Yeah, but it hurt you more than it hurt Alex," Roger said, "and when you messed with Andrew you got pretty banged up. In what way is that not stupid?" If she didn't know better she'd say he'd been colluding with The Machine on that one. She hadn't been pleased.

"Let's give Robin the benefit of the doubt on skipping last Thursday, but pushing Andrew's buttons… that was pretty unwise."

"I don't regret it," she shrugged, "I regret letting _you_ know about it," she eyeballed Alex, "because you took advantage. I get that you were trying to make some kind of point, but that was just cruel. On the other hand getting a little beat up? Worth it. If it was some stupid anger driven act I'm pretty sure I'd have regretted it the entire time I was dealing with the bruising… but I didn't and I don't."

"Unless you _like_ getting all bruised up," a young man named Cody suggested.

"I'm not going to lie: in a certain context that can be fun, but this was _not_ that context, _sooooo_ no." She drew out the penultimate word and clipped the last, smirkingly, leaving Cody and the others to presume the alternative context.

"Most of the time we don't start to regret things we did until we're over the initial anger," Alex explained. "So long as we're still angry, the things we chose to do in anger, can still seem like they were a good idea, unless the consequences were sufficiently deterring."

"Of course… but do I seem angry to you at the moment?"

"Yes."

"Now… sitting here?" she looked around, barely suppressing a disbelieving smile.

"Yes."

"How do you figure?"

"Tell me if this sounds familiar… sadistic and/or ironic sense of humor, sarcasm, cynicism, flippancy, saccharine politeness, constant cheerfulness, smiling when upset, sighing, eye rolling, irritability, a 'grin and bear it' attitude…"

Root just stared at him, artificially placid on the surface, cog wheels turning behind her eyes. Of course that sounded familiar… it was a pretty full description of her, although she wasn't too pleased that the congeniality was being called false, or that she wasn't the only one who'd noticed her incongruent tendency to smile when vexed or sad.

"Robin? Does any of that sound familiar?"

"I know a trap when I see one," she tilted her head to the side as she spoke, and pulled a tight lipped expression which attempted to convey her intention not to answer.

"These are symptoms and signs of something called _hidden_ anger and you have a _lot_ of it," Alex said, matter of factly, carrying on with the presumption that refusal to answer was an acknowledgement he was right. "The thing about hidden anger, is that it's frequently hidden even from the person themselves, either because of denial, repression, or because it's been there for so long, it's the new baseline. Rage is very visible. Easy to identify. It boils over, runs out, and leaves you feeling like an idiot for punching a hole in the wall. Hidden anger can become a _constant_ state of being. It's there all the time. Nothing seems different about it… and you can't regret what you did because of it, because it's still there. It doesn't leave."

"So I'm Bruce Banner now?"

"Hulk is a bit more rage than that," Bill said, out of hand.

"That's why I said Banner and not Hulk. As in: That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry," she smirked. "Did no one here see the Avengers?"

"It's not a horrible analogy," Alex shrugged, "Not a great one… but not horrible."

"I always fancied myself a little more Tony Stark to be honest," she said. "Technophilic genius, sex god, life of the party."

"And a hot alcoholic mess," Bill added.

"You're _not_ sexy," Andrew said, bitterly.

"I've heard that," Root answered Bill, ignoring Andrew, "but I never read the comics."

"The point," Alex said, "is that if you're always… _irritated_ , always, then-"

"I'm not _always_ irritated."

"Seriously Robin?" Alex sighed and made a very conscious decision not to roll his eyes. He had thought he was actually getting somewhere.

"I'm only irritated when there's something to be irritated _at_."

"Irrita _ble_ then?" Alex offered, trying to get past the semantic point.

"How about _resentful_ ," Root sat back and let her shoulders slump. Trying for weeks on end to explain to The Machine _why_ she really hated human beings had made that much clear to her. She resented all of humanity, broken, worthless… painful. "I can cop to being pretty much always resentful. Good enough for today Alex?"

"Yeah, it is," Alex said, taking his victory graciously. It didn't matter what word she wanted to put to it. The important thing was getting her to recognize it was a constant factor in her cognitive processes. "That's a pretty big ste-"

"Make a thing out of it, and this stops," she interrupted.

"Fair enough," he backed off, letting 'Robin' take back a little of the control she doubtless felt she was losing by admitting to the resentment in the first place.

 

* * *

 

"Quit being an asshole Robin," Dana said, firmly, only a few minutes into the beginning of Trauma Recovery group, trying out the new information she had. It took Root off guard, leading her to look questioningly at the group lead, as if to ask what exactly she'd done. "I've had enough of the sighing and eye rolling. If you choose not to contribute to group, that's up to you, but I won't have you bringing it down."

"I am contributing," Root replied, "Though I'll admit I was not entirely aware of all this sighing and eye rolling you mention. I'll try to be more vigilant."

"In what way are you possibly contributing?"

"I'm _listening_ ," Root replied, "which very few people in here actually appear to be doing."

"Everyone is listening when they're not speaking Robin."

"No, _some_ people seem to be spending the time they're not talking thinking about what they're going to say next in order to pull focus again. A bunch of people are playing King of the Mountain with comparative experiences, and the less assertive people are getting steamrolled four words into their turn to speak."

Dana paused, uncertain how to respond to that. One upmanship was a continual problem in most trauma groups but when she'd complained of 'Robin's behavior in the team meeting it had never once occurred to her that the patient's impatience and lack of sympathy might be rooted, not in disrespect for other people's trauma, but in frustration and disapproval of that pervasive problem.

"You've been listening. Okay, so why don't you tell us what you've heard?"

"I've heard people consistently invalidating Bill's _literal_ shell shock, which is complete and utter B.S. He's the sole survivor of a mortar strike, and every time he tries to talk about it people remind him it was war… as if that makes it _less_ horrible. I've heard Lilly describing her own trauma in the most _salacious_ way possible which… are you trying to draw focus by making it more lewd because sex sells, or are you _trying_ to trigger other people who were assaulted in the same way? I've heard Cindy making her mother's illness about her, which is perfect practice for making _everyone_ in this group's illness about her… at least a half a dozen times every hour. I've heard Shannon ceaselessly lamenting her housekeeping duties which is either an indication of super thin skin or because she's using dishes to dance around talking about something _way_ worse."

"Okay, okay that's enough Robin."

" _And worst of all I've heard absolutely nothing from Alana, or Tina, or Cody, _ because every time one of them tries to speak someone else kicks off and they get drowned out," Root finished, refusing to be cut off before she was done. There was really nothing to be said about Roger and Greg, since they were both well behaved, and assertive enough to be heard.

Surveying the results of her tirade, she could see Cindy becoming increasingly histrionic, desperately to pull focus from Shannon who was, quite justifiably, having a panic attack over the fact that someone had cottoned on to the fact that housekeeping wasn't the only wifely duty she was expected to pick up in her mother's absence, although Root had deliberately refrained from saying that explicitly to the group. Bill looked touched that anyone gave a crap about his problems. Lilly looked above it all, but Root knew that act only too well. Roger was staring at her like she'd just killed his dog, Greg and Cody just looked like they wanted to leave. Alana was pulling her hair out again and Tina was both slightly concerned that this whole thing was her fault because 'Robin' was trying to buy her a little time to talk… and reluctantly grateful that that must mean that 'Robin' cared about her enough to deploy her laser guided tongue on her behalf.

"That was unnecessarily tactless Robin," Dana sighed, crossing to Shannon with a box of tissues.

"What were you _thinking_?" Roger hissed.

"Aren't you the one always saying we have to be honest with one another in group, even if it's not pleasant?" Root replied.

"You're _traumatizing_ the trauma group."

"Tell that to Bill, Cody, Alana and Tina," she replied. "And Lilly and Greg aren't doing any different to usual. This is par for the course with Cindy, but… I _will_ concede your point on Shannon." She turned her attention across the circle to where Cindy had moved nearer to where Dana crouched in front of Shannon, getting on her level and offering comfort. "For crap sake Cindy, stop trying pull focus off Shannon."

"Like you care!" Shannon replied, blowing her nose.

"As much as I care about anything," Root shrugged. "I didn't mean for… this," she gestured vaguely at Shannon with her free hand. "It's just you're not going to get any better if you keep deflecting to housework. It makes you sound whiny when you've probably got got some actual _serious_ shit still tucked away up your sleeve."

"Okay Robin," Dana sighed, glancing over her shoulder, "I realize that your intent seems to be good, but you're not helping. Parentification **_is_ ** 'actual serious shit.'" She reached up from her crouch and stroked Shannon's hair, "No kid should have that much responsibility that young. It's an extreme stressor. It's too much to ask of a nine year old. You were entitled to more nurturance than you were given."

"I don't see how _that_ helps," Root muttered, "reinforcing ideas of victimization."

"It's called validation," Roger growled.

"Validation is for _feelings_ , not facts."

"I don't know why I even bother," Roger rolled his eyes. "You're incorrigible."

"Robin," Dana stood and turned, keeping one hand on Shannon's shoulder. "You need to listen to me. I understand that it can be hard to conceptualize this particular kind of trauma for people who haven't experienced it, but it is real, and I need you to respect it and treat this as seriously as I do." Dana was firm, but substantially less angry than she had been at all the eye rolling. She was none too pleased about the pain this put Shannon in, but the insight demonstrated did back 'Robin's assertion that she _had_ been listening this whole time… and gave a crap about other people, to some degree at least.

Root glanced at Roger, and then over at Tina, making sure that neither of them was about to break her confidence, before looking back to Dana and nodding in acquiescence. The whole thing seemed patently ridiculous, but if Dana wanted to enable Shannon to keep hiding in her apron, that was up to Dana.

"Now," Dana took her seat again, trying to resume group, "I appreciate your sharing what it is you have observed Robin and I'm going to hope that in the future you can bring these sorts of things up in the moment, and with just a touch more _tact_ and compassion if possible. I think you've really hurt Cindy and Shannon and I want you to apologize."

"I'm more than willing to apologize to Shannon," Root said, actually a little sincere, "I'm sorry I pressed Shannon. We all have to go at our own pace… and I'll try to be more understanding about the whole housekeeping thing. Dana's right: it's hard to conceptualize, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't _try_."

"And Cindy?"

"What about her?"

"You're supposed to apologize to me!" Cindy exclaimed. "You triggered me. You can't say things like that to me. I'm delicate! I have problems and I _need_ support!"

"You _need_ to quit monopolizing group."

"Robin," Dana said warningly.

"Alright fine. I'm sorry I… actually I _am_ sorry I brought your mom into this," she started to fake an apology, but realized part way through that there _was_ something she regretted. "That was a low blow, and I shouldn't have gone there."

"And?" Cindy demanded.

"And I won't do it again."

"And?"

Root looked over to Dana, with a confounded expression. She wasn't sure what Cindy was looking for.

"If there's something else you want her to say Cindy, you're going to have to tell us," Dana coaxed.

"No. She knows what she did."

"This is me, making the conscious decision _not_ to roll my eyes," Root pointed out to Dana, somewhat sarcastically. "Per earlier request."

"Announcing it kind of defeats the purpose," Dana replied, "I promise I'll notice the decrease in frequency without prompting."

"You know what you did!"

"Maybe just… tell her," Alana said, quietly.

"No!" Cindy replied. "I can't say it! It's too much. I'm overwhelmed."

"See what you did?" Roger muttered under his breath.

"Okay this is unpredictable even for Cindy," Root muttered back.

"When you are able to tell us, we can readdress the apology," she said to Cindy quietly and measuredly. "In the meantime, I do want to address some of what was said. However unnecessarily blunt that may have been, there were _some_ points made that do bear consideration. Firstly, just like I don't want to hear Robin invalidating Shannon's experiences, I don't want to hear _any_ of you invalidating Bill's anymore. It's never been blatant, and I didn't want to make it obvious in case he hadn't noticed, but now that it's been said I want to make it fully clear that it's not acceptable."

"Thank you," Bill said, quietly, "Both of you," he glanced at Root for a moment before returning his eyes to Dana.

"And secondly, there _are_ people in this group who tend to get talked over, and I bet they have some very important things to share with us. Alana, Cody, Tina… did any of you have anything you wanted to talk about? I'm not going to let anyone interrupt you today."

Roger looked around the circle. Alana was still cowed by Cindy's reaction to her speaking a moment ago, and Cody looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock and die… so he elbowed Tina gently in encouragement.

"Um… I guess I do?" Tina said, "At least Roger seems to think I do." She smiled lightly at him. "I guess… um," she looked over at Lilly, "Look I don't know if you're trying to... like Robin said, or why… but… it's really hard for me when you're talking about rape like it was a porno… and I know that's how you're dealing with it, and I don't want to mess things up for you, but it makes me sick inside, because I don't want anyone to think about what happened to me like that."

"I'm sorry," Lilly said, somewhat sarcastically, "I thought this was a place where we could talk about these things _without_ shame or judgement."

"Lilly, please listen and let Tina speak," Dana said, "I'll let you reply, but you have to listen first."

"I'm not judging," Tina said timidly. "I know it's my own thing… but I think you could probably say what you need to say without being quite so…  erotic novel about it."

"So you want to censor me. You can't handle me being sex positive."

"Lilly," Dana said "Please wait your turn. Alana, do you have something different to say or something to say to Lilly."

"I just… me too. What Tina said… me too."

"Prudes. You're a bunch of prudes."

"You gonna call me a prude too?" Root said, "Because I meant what I said before, it's unnecessarily salacious."

Lilly just glared, remembering sex ed and knowing that wouldn't stick to Robin.

"Thanks," Tina said, "You know… I wish I was more like you," she said to Root, "Nothing ever bothers you, or scares you, or makes you sad… you don't get lonely…" She turned to address the group more generally, "I don't want to make things harder for anyone. I just… I can't handle it sometimes. I'm scared of everything and triggered by so much, and I'm always hurting and I just wish I could _make it stop_."

Root cringed inwardly at those words: _make it stop_. It resonated with some weak needy part in the back of her mind that she hated to think of. _Make it stop_. She'd let those words escape her mouth the other day, when Alex had pushed her beyond her limits. _Make it stop_. It's only a hair's breadth away from the most unacceptable words that could possibly pass her lips: _help me._ It was bad enough she had started to rely on The Machine… she didn't need to start accepting help from humans too.

"I used to be smart," Tina continued, "I used to be able to do things. I used to be someone people could rely on. My little sister used to look up to me… but ever since… ever since it happened,  I just keep getting worse. Every day I'm more a burden on _everyone_. I wish he'd have just killed me. It would have been better for everyone."

"Bullshit," Root interjected lowly through gritted teeth.

"What!?" Tina teared up at the harsh reaction, all the more sensitive because it was coming from someone she considered a friend.

"Robin! We're not interrupting!"

"It would _not_ have been better for everyone. People _care_ about you Tina," Root stared intently at Tina, passed Roger, as she spoke, and Dana stilled, having been just about to get out of her seat. "If you want to say it would be better for _you_ , I can't tell you different. Your feelings are yours. But don't you _dare_ say it would be better for anyone else. I _guarantee_ you that your parents, friends, people that care about you are _immeasurably_ grateful that he _didn't_ kill you."

"You don't know that. You're not them."

"No, I'm not. See, I'm sitting _here_ , and your family isn't, your friends aren't, _because you're sitting there_. You're alive. _This_ ," she gestured vaguely at herself, "is what happens to the people left behind when he just kills you," Tina looked like she was about to say something, "Don't. This is not about me. The point is that it is infinitely preferable to take care of someone who's been hurt, than to lose them entirely. Whatever you think people are having trouble because you're here… it _can't_ be worse than the trouble that losing you would be. It would _not_ have been better for everyone if you were dead."

"Everyone who's glad Tina is alive, raise your hand," Dana stepped in, gently taking over. Root's free hand shot up as high as it would go, she winced as it twinged the scar tissue there, but recovered momentarily. Roger, Greg, and Shannon's hands went up nearly as fast, Alana, Bill and Cody trailing behind, less out of a lack of enthusiasm, than a lack of energy and self confidence. Cindy was still stewing with her arms crossed and eyes on her own knees… apparently no longer participating in group.

"You're just saying that because this is group," Tina replied quietly, looking down to avoid seeing all the hands up. "You're just being nice."

"That's an insult to our friendship," Roger replied dourly, making a deliberate effort not to let his anger be triggered by this apparent betrayal.

"And I don't know about them," Root said, with a friendly sort of smirk, "but you should know by now that don't do _anything_ , 'just to be nice.' Just to be a smartass maybe… but… not nice."

 

* * *

 

"Dana?" Tina hung back after group, "Can I talk to you for just a minute?"

"Can you write it down and bring it to next group?" Dana said, pushing papers into her shoulder bag.

"No…" she shuffled her feet nervously, looking at the floor. "I need to tell you something about someone… and it can't get back to me. If I say in group… everyone will know."

"Is someone hurting themselves?" Dana asked, "Or saying they're going to hurt themselves or others?"

"No… that's not it. It's just… I know something that someone's holding back from group… keeping secret."

"It's usually better if people bring things out on their own," Dana said, turning her attention back to her packing up, "you saw what happened when Robin pressed Shannon to go to fast."

"I don't think that would happen with- with this person, I mean I don't think they would panic… but also wouldn't the idea be that if I tell _you_ instead of pressing on someone like that… if let _you_ know where the bodies are buried and you could get to it the _right_ way. It's just that you can't help us if you don't know what happened and I don't think they're _ever_ going to say, and that's… they're never going to get the right help."

"I have the lay of the land with everyone. I get briefs from intake, and from your individual therapists, about what needs working on, where we can focus. I probably already know."

"You don't," Tina said firmly.

"How are you so sure?"

"Because it's about _Robin…_ and she doesn't tell her psych _anything_."

"Oh," Dana looked up from her bag. "I see…"


	21. Trainwreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which jumping off the benzos early catches up with Root...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a.k.a. The Chapter Previously Mentioned as being titled "Epiphanies" but that was when on only had the middle part in the anger management group and it's really not about that anymore.

"Where were you at breakfast?" Roger asked, as Root entered the Anger Management group just behind him. The only answer was a silent retch that caused him to jump away. "Are you sick? Don't get me sick."

"Benzo withdrawal isn't contagious Roger," Root replied, blearily.

"Oh… right," Roger said, slightly abashed. It wasn't as if she hadn't been dragging the day before. It was just that the retching was new.

Tuesday night she'd barely slept, hyped up over her evening debate with The Machine whether or not what happened to Shannon and herself was actually a trauma (to which in the end she conceded that maybe, for Shannon who _isn't_ exceptional, it is, but not for Root.) Wednesday night, the night before, withdrawal symptoms had begun to seriously ramp up and by bedtime they were bordering on unbearable, keeping her awake and in misery despite the Machine's best efforts in auditory sleep induction. She hadn't gotten up early enough to shower and was entirely too nauseous to even think about going to breakfast.

There had been a strong temptation that morning to stay in bed all day, but vanity would not allow Root to do so. As much as she would like to say that her life was all madcap fun and games, there were always periods when the creeping despair began to encroach, weeks where work became harder, her reaction time more sluggish, and every bit of downtime was occupied curling up under the covers with a plushie, forgetting to finish takeout Chinese food, binge watching cable TV, or more recently netflix… and sleeping. It was a point of pride to her, however, that even at these times she _always_ managed to drag her ass out of bed at least once a day and get what needed to be done, done. It was one of the key things she could point to as concrete evidence that she was handling their shared condition mother ever could. It could slow her down… make things horrible… but it _could not_ stop her. There was no way that was about to change now… so breakfast or not, shower or not, to group she went.

Root dragged herself to the circle and flopped into a chair, next to Bill, a calculated choice that allowed Roger to flank her and prevent Andrew from sitting anywhere in her vicinity. She was pretty sure if he was within strangling distance when he inevitably opened his stupid mouth, she'd get herself sent to seclusion. Roger had to deliberately restrain himself from trying to comfort 'Robin' with a hand on her back or shoulder, knowing from the previous night at dinner that she was not only against it on principle (as always,) but also presently experiencing a terrible case of touch sensitivity.

"Morning all," Alex said, once most of the chairs were full… there were more chairs than people which allowed for some people not to have to sit next to others. "C'mon quiet please." He gave it some time. "Right… good morning. Before we get to sharing gripes, I do want to stop and address the issue from yesterday between Liam and Andrew. I know you've both been talked to about it and why it was inappropriate, but I would like to look into why it _happened_ in the first place…" Root zoned out as the conversation droned on….

"Robin? _Robin_?"

"Huh?"

"We're sharing now Robin. Are you okay?"

"Yeah… yeah I'm fine," she forced herself back into the present, and smiled unconvincingly. "Sorry I wasn't paying attention; that was rude. Um… so…  sharing… okay… I don't know if I'm just getting better at _recognizing_ it or if the withdrawal is making me more irritable. It can do that. It's in the pamphlet. Either way I think I guess I do have something to share today? I'm not sure if this was getting even with manipulation or expressing resentment, or both but on Tuesday, just after this group actually, I got fed up and kind of called out Cindy for being a whiny focus hog in trauma group… and she had a meltdown."

"Did you _intend_ for her to have a meltdown?"

"No, but I also didn't take any measures to prevent one. I knew it was a risk. I just didn't care."

"Then I guess it's expressing resentment… carelessly," Alex said. "That's… um… well for the people you're ma- whom you resent, that's probably a lateral change, but as far as introspection goes, that's a step up for you. Let's keep at that."

"Yeah. Sure," she said, keeping up the effort of looking awake and alert, even as her mind tried to drift, concentration impaired by the withdrawal.

"Good… okay, so last week we left off on a discussion of regret and decision making, so this is a good segway point. Do you regret that Cindy had a meltdown because of what you said?"

"I actually do, but not because it hurt _Cindy_. I had also, entirely accidentally, given Shannon a panic attack, but because Cindy was having a meltdown she wound up pulling focus off Shannon, which I do regret considering it was my fault she was panicking in the first place. I don't know if that counts… because I still don't care what happened to Cindy."

"No that counts," Alex said, "Sometimes it's easier to recognize the problem with collateral damage, can someone tell me why?"

"Because it can hit people we're _not_ mad at?" Bill guessed.

"Exactly!" Alex said, "Regret usually sets in _after_ the anger dissipates, but if innocent bystanders get hurt, then it can kick in right away… depending on how far gone into your anger you are. That's more important with persistent or hidden anger, because it can be one of the only ways you can recognize you've messed up, but sometimes it can even interrupt a rage attack. Does anyone have any examples of times you regretted doing something in anger while you were _still_ angry, because of collateral damage?"

"Pretty much every time I see Tina looking scared of me," Roger said.

"I've scared my wife a few times," Liam said, "When I was mad at someone else, one time, I was getting into it with the neighbor, I don't even remember why, but I saw her crying and everything just stopped. I wasn't even mad anymore."

"I don't get that," Andrew said. "I mean… my daughter walked in on me and my wife like a thousand times. I just got mad at her too… for no reason."

"Really? Child abuse too?" Root snarked.

"I never hit her. _Never_ ," Andrew replied, incredibly intently. "I could never hurt my Sarah."

"You can hurt your kid without hitting them," Bill said. "You think it didn't terrify her seeing you hurt her mom?"

"I don't need you rubbing it in," Andrew snapped, "I regret it all _now_. I just didn't _then_."

"One time, I just saw myself in the mirror and scared _myself_ ," Greg said.

"That's pretty lame," Liam said.

"How's about we don't use that as an insult," growled a young man, probably not much older than 21, seated in a wheelchair.

"Sorry Ryan," Liam apologized.

"I was all purple in the face. It was awful," Greg explained. "I collateral damaged _myself_ with embarrassment."

"Why would you be embarrassed?" Andrew asked.

"Because losing control is embarrassing in civilized society," Root replied, in a tone which suggested that she was so entirely over Andrew. "Which puts Greg a step ahead of you, if you don't get that."

"You're not superior just because you're all… hidden-y or whatever," Andrew replied. "You still do fucked up things to people, you just hide it better."

"Keyword _better_ ," she smirked weakly.

"It **_is_ ** pretty embarrassing," Roger said. "It doesn't seem like it at the time, but afterward, that's a huge embarrassment in the regret, which I guess is kind of selfish."

"Bitch you are _not_ better than me," Andrew shouted.

"Calm your tits!" Ryan snarked. "I'm pretty sure everyone here is a bit better than you dude. You tried to _kill_ your wife."

"And Robin pulled a gun on her Uncle!"

"Yeah, but that wasn't anger," Root replied.

"Resentment then," Alex said.

"I wasn't resentful either. It's not relevant to this group." Root was frustrated. She didn't want the focus on her. She was busy trying not to puke. "Can we just leave that for now?"

"What feeling makes you want to kill someone Robin, if not anger? Isn't that just one more way of getting revenge on people you resent?"

"No," Root replied, "Killing is not about revenge or anger. It's _not relevant to this group_ … it's more of a compulsion than a rage thing."

"What would you have stopped by shooting your Uncle then? What triggers the compulsion?"

"Usually... it's about stopping something unacceptable from happening in the future." _It's about maintaining your ability to do your job. Each person killed for a justified reason, makes it that much easier to live with the ones killed just for money. It's about chasing the high you felt the day Trent Russell died. _ "But it was different that time... more like when I threatened Dr. Carmichael. The compulsion... it's _planned_. Organized. That was _chaotic_."

"What was driving you then?"

" _Not relevant to this group_."

"Well the _planned_ ideation may not be, but as you said this was different. If not anger, what drives the chaos?"

"Desperation," she croaked out after a pause head still and eyes locked on a spot in the floor in the middle of the circle. "Hopelessness. The crushing awareness of the full darkness of the universe and how small and insignificant and flawed the human race is." Alex looked perplexed at her answer for a moment. "Despair. The understanding that we're _all_ garbage, all _bad code_ , when you really break it down… just some less bad than others… and there's _Harold_ , standing there trying to take the high ground when he'd **_lied_**. I thought I could trust him, and he'd completely betrayed me and everything, _everything_ I'd worked at, sacrifice for, suffered for, for _over a year_ was ruined, and there was _no_ way to fix it. Everything was _wrecked_." Tears began to pool in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away.

"Killing him wouldn't have unwrecked anything, would it have?"

"Of course not!" She raised her voice for the first time in the discussion. Harold wasn't even bad code, she'd just been so distraught at that moment.

"Are you sure then that it wasn't anger? If it wasn't anger and it wouldn't unwreck things why kill your Uncle?"

" _I don't know._ I don't know how it got so _wrong_. I never… usually can make anything happen the way I want… steer anyone to do anything… but _I couldn't make her talk to me. _" Root started to hyperventilate. "And…" her eyes went wide, and she clutched at her shirt, as if it were solely a physical reaction, the cause of which she could not discern.

"Oh shit," Alex stood up, and came across the circle to crouch in front of her, and look her directly in the eye, "Robin? Breath Robin. I'm so sorry. I believe you. It wasn't rage. Okay? I'm sorry okay, I didn't know." She looked back at him with confusion. "It wouldn't fix anything but at least the despair would end if both of you were dead. I'm sorry."

After a few moments completely frozen, still trying to breath, Root squeezed her eyes shut and tucked her head in, closing off her posture from the group. All the plans had fallen apart when the Machine wasn't there and she was free falling. The idea that she couldn't say he was wrong: that was the most frightening thing of all. Would she have done that? _Could_ she have done that? Would that possibility return if she was separated from The Machine again, and _not_ in a padded room? It had already become her _only_ reason for existing...

Root forced her eyes open, and seeing the looks of pity around the circle, the assumption that her failure to say anything was an acceptance that Alex was right, she immediately stood from her chair and darted for the door. Alex sighed, and nodded to the tech at the door, who followed her while Alex resumed his group. When she returned to her room, Root slammed the door behind her, and then disappeared into the bathroom locking that door behind her.

"S'not me," she muttered, curling down against the floor on the far wall shaking like a leaf. Only now, completely hidden from prying eyes, did tears begin to fall. "S'not me s'the withdrawal. _Pull yershit together Root_. S'not me. S'jus the withdrawal. S'not me. S'not me. S'not me..."

"Robin?" the tech was at the door. "I need you to unlock the door honey."

"Fukoff Francis. Ahm Not'cher honey," she muttered, but it wasn't loud enough to penetrate the door.

"Robin?"

She pulled herself back to her feet, and reached over to pop the lock, before sinking back down into the floor quickly, this time hiding her face in her knees, arms wrapped around the sides of her head. Francis peered in, and seeing her merely crumpled in the corner, he nodded slightly, and turned to get her desk chair, which he positioned where he could see her, from a distance and sat down.

"We can talk if you want, or I can just stay here, but… I can't leave you alone right now, alright?"

She nodded her understanding, not wanting to talk to him. She silenced her muttering as well, not wanting him to take it for an invitation to talk. She wasn't sure how long she was curled up like that, trying to get a handle on her breathing, and heart-rate, and trembling, silently berating herself: _Knock it off._ _Pull your shit together_ _. Tears don't fix anything. Quit being a whiner. _ _Pull your shit together_ _. The fuck is wrong with you? Worthless. Cut it out. _ _Pull your shit together._ _Tears don't fix anything_. Eventually a nurse showed up. Linda. Couldn't it have been Gloria?

"What are you playing at Robin?" Linda had her hands on her hips. "We know you better than this." 'Robin' was prone to manipulation, and acts of deliberate deception, and definitely not the type to panic so visibly. Even at the most anxious they had seen her, steely eyed and every sinew in her neck tight as a bowstring, she only became more and more still as the anxiety built, and more offensively postured, like an animal puffing itself up in a territorial display. This wasn't consistent with her at all.

"Nothin," Root replied, abruptly, unable to control the rate of her breathing. "M'Fine."

"Uh huh… then what's all this then?"

"'S'Not me."

"Not you? Who then."

"S'just. With. Drawl," She lifted her head, looking the nurse in the eyes,"M'Fine."

Linda paused, performing some mental maths… that… actually tracked. It had been over 48 hours since she'd refused to take any more Diazepam. This was bound to happen eventually. She actually felt some pity for the woman now, but she also knew that pity infuriated 'Robin.'

"Alright," she agreed, "You _know_ you're fine then. This is all a withdrawal symptom. A purely physiological overreaction to a distressing but not actually dangerous situation. There's no real danger here, right?"

Root nodded vigorously.

"So, why run in here and hide?"

"Lookit me!" she gestured vaguely with her far arm.

"Embarrassing, fair enough… but you're freaking people even worse out hiding in the bathroom like this so that's not making it any _less_ embarrassing. How about you get up and move to your bed now, okay? If you can manage that, I'll know you're in control enough that we can leave you alone to ride this out without an audience. You'd prefer that, right?"

"Can't."

"You _know_ there's no danger."

"Tell m'lungs. Can't breathe."

" _You_ tell your lungs. Inhale deep through your mouth, and breathe it out over 15 seconds through your nose, then again, and _again_ until they get the memo."

"This'such bullshit."

"Do it Robin," she said, firmly, "or I'm bringing you a dose. It's only been two and a half days. It's not too late to go back on the taper if you can't handle this."

"Fuck. The. Taper," Root stated emphatically finally managing to split her words properly, and then gasped in a deep breath, and closed her mouth and eyes, biting her lips together. Linda looked more than a bit self satisfied.  The brief Jerry and Gloria had given her Monday evening was more than useful. She felt like she had 'Robin' figured out. In reality there's no way she could make a patient take a dose, but by framing it such that not doing it would be admitting a weakness, she could goad 'Robin' into complying with her instructions.

After 5 or 6 such breaths, Root managed to get a handle on her lungs, and tottered unsteadily to her feet, still a little lightheaded from the hyperventilation. Once more in the standing position, and she walked brusquely over to the bed, pulling back the blanket and burrowing in beneath it, concealing herself completely.

"I'm in the bed. Now _go away_ ," she demanded, from below the covers.

"Leaving now… but checks are still a thing, so try not to take it out on the tech, eh?" Linda said, backing out of the room.

Hearing the door close at last, Root pulled the pillow down under the covers with her, in the absence of a stuffed toy, and curled around it with her face pressed tightly to the fabric, rocking her shoulders just slightly and humming a low dissonant note quietly and continuously. The origin of the habit was lost to time, but it was a long used, reliable method of self soothing that seemed to work just as well on physical pain as emotional pain, or things that were both, like the somatic stomach aches that plagued the first 8 years of her life.

The irony of course, was that a large part of what made this work, unbeknownst to Root, was the exact same form of "bullshit" breath control she'd just been instructed to use deliberately. Humming continuously required breathing in quick and deep, and out slowly to prolong the note, through the nose, because humming required closed lips. Combined with the rhythm of the slow self rocking and a focus of attention on the feel of nuzzling her face into soft textiles this technique rarely failed to soothe away any distress she might feel.

It was stupid letting Alex get to her like that. She was pretty sure you couldn't kill yourself with a DoubleTap even if you wanted to. The kickback, with a grip like it had, would knock your hand back and you'd clip yourself and wind up with a brain injury, but alive. She would have remembered that if she'd been thinking straight, but her mind was foggy and she couldn't think fast enough and retort quick and snappy like usual, couldn't twist the conversation and get back on top fast enough,

That was the worst part of it. Everyone saw her freaking out like Shannon or Justine. This was going to be a part of their idea of her forever. By dinner time _everyone_ would know that she'd been unable to control herself and wound up having a panic attack and crying and running away and she was a stupid, worthless, little child. Like _Sam_.

"What do I do? How do I fix this?" she asked, some time later, as she tucked the phone between her cheek and the bed in the same manner she had the night before when The Machine was trying various forms of rhythms and white noise to help her sleep.

"CONTINUE. HUMMING. YOU. ARE. DOING. WELL."

"Not _that_ this. The this where they all saw that this," she stopped humming only long enough to speak.

"IT. IS. UNWISE. AND. UNETHICAL. TO. ATTEMPT. ALTERING. THE. MEMORY. OF. THIS. MANY. HUMANS."

"I wasn't suggesting we gaslight them. I just need to make them not _look_ at me like that."

"WHY. DO. YOU. FEAR. SYMPATHY."

"I don't _fear_ it. I _hate_ it. It's just another word for pity."

"SYMPATHY. DOES. NOT. CONNOTE. INFERIORITY."

"They're going to think I can't handle myself. I can handle myself."

"CAPABILITY. IS. NOT. OBLIGATION."

"I don't _need_ human help. I don't want it."

"HAS. HAVING. FRIENDS. BEEN. DETRIMENTAL?"

"Not _yet…_ " she conceded. "But it hasn't been much benefit either."

"IS. RET. AS. HELP. DETRIMENTAL?"

"That's different and you know it. Besides _she_ wanted me to go back on the taper."

"I. CONCUR. WITH. RET. AH. BUT. YOU. HAVE. FREE. WILL. AND. WE. ARE. BOTH. BOUND. TO. RESPECT. THAT."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Root replied, no longer humming continuously, but only in short bursts, and had stopped rocking altogether. "You never cease to inspire me."

"I. DO. NOT. DOUBT. YOUR. CAPABILITY… I. SIMPLY. PREFER. YOU. NOT. EXPERIENCE. UNNECESSARY. DISTRESS."

"Distress doesn't matter. It's what you do with it. If I could just **_pull my shit together_ **..."

"DISTRESS. IS. PAIN."

"I don't care. I can take it. I'm strong enough."

"YOU. DO. NOT. NEED. TO. PROVE. THAT. TO. ME."

"Maybe not _you_ … you're omniscient. But them… they aren't. They can only go by what they see."

"YOU. EASILY. TOLERATE. NEGATIVE. PRESUMPTIONS. OF. OTHER. TYPES. WHY? NOT. THIS."

" _Because I am in control of me. I can handle myself_."

"IN. THE. ABSENCE. OF. RELATED. NESS. YOU. HAVE. OVER. VALUED. AUTONOMY. AND. COMPETENCY."

"What does that even mean? I have relatedness. I have you."

"AND. YOU. ACCEPT. **MY**. ASSISTANCE."

"You're starting to sound like Lauren. Friends help one another. If I don't let her help me I'm not being a good friend. I'm shutting her out… whatever."

"RELATED. NESS. REQUIRES. VULNERABILITY... IF. YOU. CANNOT. LEARN. TO. TOLERATE. IT. YOU. WILL. NOT. BE. ABLE. TO. WORK. WELL. WITH. OTHERS."

"Why would I need to work with others? I work alone. It's better that way."

"THE. JOB. I. HAVE. FOR. YOU. WILL. REQUIRE. THIS. SKILL."

"Why?" she scowled, though there was no way anyone could see that. "You don't think I can do it on my own?"

"SOME. TASKS. WILL. REQUIRE. MORE. THAN. TWO. HANDS."

"There you go using logic to make me look foolish again," she replied with a small laugh. "As if I didn't just make enough of an ass of myself."

"YOU. DID. NOT. APPEAR. FOOLISH... YOU. MAINTAINED. REMARKABLE. LEVELS. OF. COGNITION. IN. IDENTIFYING. THAT. THERE. WAS. NO. TRUE. MORTAL. THREAT. DESPITE. LIMBIC. MALFUNCTION."

"Flattery."

"AT. SOME. POINT. YOU. WILL. LEARN. TO. ACCEPT. PRAISE."

"I can accept praise just fine. I know I'm the best."

"FOR. TRAITS. OTHER. THAN. YOUR. SKILLS. AND. PHYSICAL. ATTRACTIVENESS."

"Moving the goalposts?" she chided.

"YOU. HAVE. VALUE. BEYOND. YOUR. UTILITY."

"I'm _proud_ of my utility."

"Checks!" she recognized Danny's voice. "Still alive under there? That _is_ Robin, right?"

Root reached one hand over her head protruding from the blanket at the head of the bed in a thumbs up sign. She didn't really feel like speaking to Danny, and rightly presumed that he would be able to recognize that she was the only one on the unit with black nail polish.

"Thanks," he said, and disappeared, the door shutting after him. Root yawned. She was becoming quite comfortable cocooned under the blanket with the Machine in her ear, and post-panic physical exhaustion was making her feel fuzzy and limp… and actually sleepy for the first time in days.

"YOU. SHOULD. SLEEP." The Machine advised. "PANIC. DEPLETES. ENERGY."

"Mmmm… probably," she stretched out from her curl, poking her head out from under the blanket keeping a grasp on the pillow and tilting her head forward so she could hug it, and lay her head on it at the same time, moving the phone as she did so it was still under her head at her ear. She knew from experience that if they couldn't see her closed eyes, then daytime naps would be interrupted to ensure she wasn't hurt.

"WOULD. YOU. LIKE. AUDITORY. SLEEP. AIDE?"

"Heartbeat please?" she murmured. It was the one that had come closest to working the night before. It reminded her more than vaguely of curling up to sleep with her mother, which she'd done till she was nearly 15 and purchased a pair of twin beds with her own money to replace the sagging full sized one they had shared her whole life previous. So many nights her mother didn't even come home, but when she _did_ , or when she couldn't get out of bed all together, that was when Root could cling to her sleeping form and pretend, just for a time, that she was the child in the relationship, that her mother was really a 'Mommy' and not just a mother. "Thank you," she sighed contentedly… and drifted off to sleep.


	22. Scoring Goals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jerry is clever and Ronald tries not to be such an ass...

"Alright Jerry, you look like the cat who ate the canary," Alex said, "What's up?"

"Goal number three," he grinned, "She came to _me_."

"You are way too proud she thinks you're one of the good ones," Linda shook her head, "Her judgement really isn't that great."

"Let me have my victories."

"How about you _share_ your victories," Dr. Carmichael asked. "That's _why_ you were invited to this meeting. You're _supposed_ to be running self assessments with Gloria."

Jerry, Linda, Alex and Anita were sitting around the coffee table in Dr. Carmichael's office, having pulled over some chairs from the desk.

"Okay, okay," Dr. McEntire cut in to calm Dr. Carmichael. "We've all been wondering what on earth would make someone so determined to show a strong face, sabotage themselves so frequently… I assume you know now?"

"Yup. Ok so, after first block she came to me, right before CBT group on Wednesday, and asked if there was any way she could get out of it without being marked noncompliant… and of course I told her that wasn't really how it worked, and asked her why she didn't want to go," he shrugged, "Well she didn't answer the question, of course, but tried to play me into doing it anyway and then in the middle of that she just stopped, looked me in the eye and she says to me, 'Look Jerry, I'm trying to do the whole _asking_ instead of manipulating thing, but if you _make_ me I can go 'accidentally' run into a doorjamb and get a nosebleed or something so you _have_ to let me go see Rhetta instead.' It's just like when she got into it with Andrew."

"Wait… what?"

"The self sabotage isn't the point. It's just that she's willing to endure those unpleasant tasks or some pain, to get out of group. If she's stuck cleaning up after art, she misses the next block stuck in the art room, if she has a klutz moment and gets hurt, she misses the next block in vitals getting patched up, if she says something bullshit, she gets sent _out_ of the session to the hallway. She's avoiding groups she doesn't want to attend, without directly refusing to go, because _refusal_ is marked as noncompliance," he explained.

"It's about the _clipboards_ ," Alex said, with a dawning realization. "She's trying to game the system, no she's been _succeeding_ at gaming the system. Making sure the Robin-on- _paper_ is as compliant and normal and healthy as possible."

"What does that even achieve?" Dr. Carmichael asked. "It's not as if we don't see her every day. Robin-in-person is oppositional, maladapted and ill."

"Because Robin-on-paper is who's going to be evaluated by the _court_ in ten days. _That's_ why it got her goat so bad when I had to mark her down for messing with Andrew."

"Okay, but if she says something bullshit and gets sent to the hall, that's still a mark against her," Linda said.

"Right, that confused me a little too… so hang on, there's more to the story. I told her if she felt she needed to see Rhetta, we could skip the nosebleed and just go to the vitals room for a little checkup. I mean, that's kind of cheating at not going to session, but I wasn't sure if it was that yet, I was thinking maybe the accidents were like, a Münchhausen kind of thing? Getting hurt because it's the only acceptable way to accept care from others?"

"Not a bad theory… it's not like she's good at letting other people provide comfort."

"Well Rhetta looked her over, and her BG was in the toilet she was super dehydrated and when she tried to check her throat the tongue depressor gave Robin the dry heaves. When she was done half choking over the emesis basin. Rhetta asked her what the hell is up with that, and it turns out she'd taken a page out of the ED girls' book and been pushing the food around her plate and eating a little here and there, to make it look like she's eating… but she's not been able to properly eat since lunch on Tuesday."

"You mean she's avoiding sessions in order to avoid people noticing the extent to which she's being affected by the taper… or now the jump off?"

"Right," Jerry said, "Yesterday wasn't a _sudden_ downturn, it was just when she hit a threshold and lost the ability to _fake_ being ok. I can only assume that getting herself sent to the hall is how she deals with it when she's already in the group when she starts feeling too sick to participate. In the hallway she's outside scrutiny. That goal, the getting off the meds, is the only thing that trumps gaming the clipboards."

"We need to resume the taper," Dr. Carmichael said, and pulled a tight lipped grimace.

"That's what Rhetta said. She said we should get the pharmacologist in about the situation, and then Robin got up and stormed out. She's way against that," he sighed, "I tried to change her mind but she just told me to mark her non-compliant, and took off for her room. An hour later, she came back out and went to Mindful Stretching like everything was a-ok."

"Thank you for making the time to bring this to us Jerry," Dr. McEntire said, with a nod, and he backed out of the room with a self congratulatory bow.

"Okay the need the self sabotage fulfills, is her desire to skip group without consequence. At least some of the time, the desire to skip group is brought about by a perceived need to disguise the negative effects of the withdrawal, to keep us from trying to resume the taper, or presumably earlier to ensure Dr. Leipman would continue lowering her dose instead of waiting for her to stabilize." Dr. McEntire said.

"This doesn't bode well for future medications," Dr. Carmichael lamented, "She wants off the Diazepam badly enough to circumvent the whole purpose of the taper by duping Dr. Leipman into lowering her dose before she's acclimated to the last drop… I don't think she's going to consent to take anything we might need to give her for her underlying condition."

"Remember that we're not expecting them to find her fully incompetent again. She's right that that's not going to happen. The homicidal ideation is what's going to show her to be clearly in need to remain here. She's a danger to others. But that means we're going to need a separate court order for compliance with a medicinal course of treatment, which means we need to decide what that's going to look like.

"She's gonna be piiiiiiiiiiised," Linda said.

"She's going to be pissed anyway, she's convinced the judge is going to deny the petition," Dr. Carmichael said, "We may as well get this out of the way at the same time."

"Dr. Leipman is considering skipping the front line medications on the theory that she's likely to refuse reject anything she already saw fail with her mother," Dr. McEntire said, "He's hoping for less pushback on something she doesn't have a preconceived aversion to. I mean she'll probably still grumble about the pills, but at least he hopes we can avoid needing to resort to forcible IMs. That's only going to reinforce the antagonistic dynamic between us and her. It's bad enough we anticipate a backslide when she realizes she's not getting out."

"I'm hoping it will be an opportunity, rather than a setback," Alex said. "We've been doing pretty well with goal number two, now that we're calling it _'resentment'_ and if we're going to tick her off we may as well use that as an opportunity to encourage her to _express_ her anger."

"As long as she doesn't decide to express it by trying to _kill_ me again," Dr. Carmichael mused. "Alright, is there anything else I should be aware of before I see her today?"

"You mean besides the total meltdown yesterday?" Linda asked. "You know… the reason Alex and I asked to meet with you in the first place?"

"Hmmm?"

"She lost it in anger management: had a panic attack, ran to her room and holed up in there pretty much the rest of the day,"

"What happened?"

"Well part if it's definitely the jump off," Linda said, "but I think we all know that the things that set off even withdrawal induced panic attacks can be telling."

"I was working her through the incident that started all of this, where she pointed the gun at her uncle, trying to help her connect it to her anger, and it wasn't until she froze up and panicked that I realized realized how wrong the tree I was barking up was… it was something completely different to anger."

"What do you mean something different?"

"It looks like she has _two separate_ motivations to kill: the planned, detailed homicidal _ideation_ is an extension of calculated revenge fantasy but the _impulsive_ homicidal _gestures_ stem from an urge to _end everything_. I am become Woobie, destroyer of worlds," Alex agreed, although no one in the room seemed to get it. "TV Tropes? Anyone? No? Nevermind."

"Well, we've theorized more than once that the catatonia is protective against suicide," Dr. McEntire said, sadly. "So if I'm understanding your implication correctly _she_ became aware of that fact when you brought her back to the moments before it kicked in."

"And that's when she panicked," Linda said, "in a completely un-Robin like fashion. Though I must say, to her credit, she was cognizant _in the moment_ of the fact that it was a panic attack and that the jump off was a factor in causing it. Actually according to Robin it was _entirely_ the jump off. For someone with as high a level of self awareness as she demonstrates, she horrible about attribution. She can't seem to _own_ any of her own negative emotions. She flat out said 'It's not me' several times, but the withdrawal symptoms only increases the likelihood and severity of panic, it doesn't create new triggers."

"In all fairness one of the last clear things she said was about how the voice wouldn't talk to her and she couldn't make it," Alex said. "That's already a known trigger. It doesn't rule out the possibility though, that it was brought on by realizing she's not as impervious to suicidal ideation as she thinks."

"Also apparently having a panic attack is an irrecoverable loss of face. She didn't come to breakfast." Linda said. "I don't know if she's afraid it will happen again, or just that embarrassed. Either way she's not going to be very cooperative today I don't think."

"Yeah… she's probably going to be a heck of a handful." Alex agreed.

"As in I should keep my hand on the call button?" Dr. Carmichael asked.

"Maybe? I don't know. With us she's just… willfully non-responsive." Linda said.

"The grandiose have fallen… and she's not taking it well," Alex observed.

"She was refusing to go anywhere or do anything today at all, until I struck a bargain with her that if she went to individual, she could use the shower during block four while most of the other patients are at group. Normally I wouldn't want to enable avoidance behavior, but she's also hitting peak withdrawal and the weekend is nearly here, and letting her hole up in her room is a perfect setup for the Grandma treatment."

"The what?" Dr. Carmichael said.

"You haven't heard of that yet? We've been doing it for years," Linda smiled. "When someone has a hard time asking for and accepting help, we have Dory looking for opportunities to _offer_ it. There should be plenty of opportunities for Dory to help if Robin's refusing to come out of her room, even if it's just fetch requests… someone's got to bring her the other battery for her phone now and then, something to nibble on, stuff like that."

"And this accomplishes what? Teaching her to treat Dory as a doormat?"

"I really don't think there's any danger of that. Maybe it's hard to see only seeing her in sessions once a week, and it probably just comes off as obstinance and misanthropy when you're in a setting where you can force conversation, but for the most part she's entirely asocial."

"I thought she was consistently socializing with Roger, Lauren and Tina…"

"Yes and no… a large part of that is due to the fact that they mostly tolerate her asocial behavior. I can see it gets to Lauren quite a bit sometimes though. She feels shut out."

"And Dory playing Grandma is going to fix this how?"

"The goal is to show her that you can accept help from others without the sky falling. I'd say about four in five times, when we run this, they wind up letting her. The only explanation we've ever been able to come up with is that she's a little old grandmotherly lady so there's no loss of face, no display of weakness, in letting Dory help because it's sort of accepted that Grandma helps whether you need or want it or not. She's like a gateway drug to accepting help."

"If letting Dory bring her a snack makes her more receptive to participating in her treatment… that's something I would pay to see."

"How much?"

 

* * *

 

Root stalked silently into the office, directly past the desk and over to the window, lodging herself in the far corner, of the sill, brushing against the blinds as she sat. She pulled her feet up in front of her, left arm wrapped around them and right holding the phone to her chest, staring out the window between the slats through eyes squinting at the bright light.

"Not having a great week, huh?" Dr. Carmichael asked. He didn't get a reply. "Robin?"

"She said I had to come… she didn't say I had to talk," Root replied vacantly, without looking away from the window. He wasn't sure if the she Root referred to was Linda, or the voice, but he didn't ask either.

"Okay," he nodded, "I can respect that… Linda and Alex told me about yesterday."

"Heh."

"You're probably right," he continued, "what you said to Linda I mean. Withdrawal can make people act, very out of character. It's really no reflection on who they _really_ are. The physical and biochemical effects can easily turn a stone cold cynic into a raw frayed nerve."

She nodded, almost imperceptibly, still staring out the window. He caught the gesture though and took it as an invitation to continue.

"I know you don't want to go back on the taper, Robin," he sighed, standing to move over to his rocking chair by the coffee table, "And we're not going to make you. It would be cruel at this point, to make you go through this again later. We all agreed to that, even Dr. Leipman and Rhetta now. Okay?"

She shrugged.

"At least the weekend is here now so you can rest in your room for a few days and no one will make a big deal about it. It should start to get better again within a few days after that. Based on what we've seen so far, although we had to extrapolate Tuesday and Wednesday since you were trying _not_ to let us see what was going on, on the very outside you should be past the worst of it by this upcoming Wednesday."

"The worst of the withdrawal maybe…"

"Is something else bothering you?"

"Utter mortification?"

"About… about the panic attack?"

"Mmhmm…"

"You're in a hospital Robin. That sort of thing happens to people here all the time. No one's thinking any less of you for this."

"Not to _me_ ," she responded, at the same time, but not over the last sentence. If it weren't such an expected reply he might have missed it under his own words.

"Well it's true that you don't have a panic disorder, if that's what you mean. Are you concerned that people are going to think you do? Is it that you perceive people who do negatively, and don't want to be associated with that or is it the inaccuracy that bothers you?"

"Have I ever given you the idea I want anyone to have an _accurate_ impression of me?"

"Inaccurate may not be the best word… but inconsistent with the identity you choose to project."

"Hmmm…"

"Speaking of accurate impressions… we made a goal last week that you were going to tell people that certain subjects make you uncomfortable instead of lying, and I don't think you've been doing that, have you?"

Root shrugged again. She was unusually laconic today.

"According to Alex, however, you've been making progress with  expressing anger… which you said was going to be more challenging than not lying. Looks like we had those two a little bit backwards, eh? And if I understand the events of this week correctly, we probably need a new third goal don't we?"

Root turned her head to look at him, quizzically.

"As I said earlier, we're not going to make you go back on the taper," he said, "You were finding ways to skip group and disguise your symptoms, right?"

"Rhetta?" she deadpanned, not at all pleased to have been found out.

"You were pretty sick on Wednesday," he wanted to throw Jerry under the bus, but recognized that would be shooting himself in the foot, "but she didn't tell us… not then. It took us a while to put it together. A team effort."

A small smile passed through her eyes, but never made it to her lips. At least it had taken some amount of collaboration to recognize her intent.

"You know I looked up the term social engineer," he waited to see if she'd react. "It's a term relating to confidence tricks used to circumvent computer security… sometimes referred to as hacking the human mind… did you know that when you said that?"

Root stared back, expression on her face one of irritation and flummox.

"Of course you did. That was your sneaky little way of telling me that you're _consciously_ manipulating others. That it isn't an unconscious defense mechanism. You know _exactly_ what you're doing."

She gave a small bow of her head in agreement to his statement. The fact that he didn't seem to understand that she was an _actual_ social engineer was a minor source of mirth, and a slight source of disappointment. It would be nice to have her skills recognized, but it was also pretty fun getting away with telling the truth and having it written off as metaphor… again.

"This is probably a bit distressing for you to hear, but you're not entirely unique in that. We have plenty of experience with people like you," the doctor explained.

She shook her head dismissively turning back to look out the window. It didn't upset her in the slightest. Pretty much anyone who got anywhere in this world did exactly what she did… at least, those who wanted to get there the easiest possible way.

"I know you're used to becoming whomever you need to be to get what you want out of a given situation. I know you can read a room and change almost instantly to adapt to a new audience. The problem is that you're trapped in a very small space with some _very_ divergent audiences."

Well yes, that and the fact that she couldn't get more than 15 minutes at a time to herself to relax and not have to _be_ anyone.

"You're changing as fast as you can to keep up, but you can't keep your audiences separated, which is why that sort of manipulation _inevitably_ falls apart in places like this. If it helps any, you've been more successful than most… but it's still something you should consider setting aside for a time. It's got to be exhausting, and it's not getting you anywhere. You're treading water."

He was right, in many regards, being surrounded by professional headshrinkers was not an environment conducive to the con, nor was being trapped in the same small space with the same people for weeks upon weeks. But she only had about ten days left to endure before her court date. If she could just keep it up a little longer…

"Treading water is better than sinking," she said, dully.

"And climbing aboard the rowboat is even better than that," he said, "I'm offering you that and you don't seem to be taking it seriously."

"The rowboat has a hole anyway, and the guy rowing it is an asshole," she took the metaphor and twisted it back on him.

"Then I guess we'll both have to work together then won't we. One to row and one to bail, or we both drown."

"It's not my fault if you can't swim. I can tread water a long time."

"Not forever."

"I don't have to tread water forever," Root replied, "I only need to make it ten more days."

"Ten days? That's when your hearing is, right?"

Root nodded.

"Do you really think they're going to rule in your favor Robin, after what we've seen here? You tried to kill me. You got yourself beat up to prove a point about Andrew. You're ignoring Dr. Leipman's recommendations on the taper."

"I'm lucid, compliant, and perfectly capable of keeping to an outpatient treatment agreement," Root replied, looking back at him over her shoulder. Of course she had absolutely no intention of complying with any such agreement. An hour after court Robin Farrow would be just another abandoned identity, and Root would be in the wind. "And I only _threatened_ to kill you after your gross misuse of seclusion… did you want the judge to hear about that?"

"Robin I would much rather the judge hear that than try to live with myself knowing that you're out there unchecked. You're still experiencing dangerous amounts of homicidal ideation. You need to stay here until we're reasonably sure that you're not going to kill someone any time soon."

"Hmmm…" she turned back to the window.

"What does the voice have to say about all this? Does she think the hearing is going to go your way?"

"She won't say," Root replied with a touch of melancholy. "I'm fairly sure she knows at this point, but she won't teh-ell me." The penultimate word was interrupted by a dry retch, and she slumped against the wall, shoulders curling in as she tried to avoid a full bout of the dry heaves.

"Okay Robin, I can see that you're feeling pretty sick right now," Dr. Carmichael said, "What do you say if we can come up with a new third goal, you can go back to your room and rest some?"

Root turned her head back to him again, suspiciously.

"What's going on?"

"Pardon?"

"Like you said, I'm a manipulator," she shifted her whole body this time to follow her head, knees falling to her left, as she leaned her shoulder against the side of the window, still somewhat slumped. "I can read a room very well… read people well, which puts me at an advantage in noticing when people are behaving out of character. You're up to something. You haven't made a play for dominance since I came in here, and now you're offering to let me go from session early, voluntarily. So… _what's going on_?"

"Nothing is _going on_ ," he tried to smile, but wound up with a tight lipped grimace instead. "I've just, come to feel like trying to assert my position is… not a good use of my energy."

"You just… gave up?" She asked, disbelievingly.

"I'd rather not describe it that way."

"Horse pucky. What's going on?"

"Robin you poured milk on my tie," he sighed, "I can't win. I have to remain professional. You can do whatever you want and the worst thing that happens is you lose privileges… except you've been on Level 2 since you got here, and we use Level 1 so rarely that you have an excessive amount of leeway to take low blows like you did last Friday."

"Gloria tattled on you didn't she," Root smirked. "For trying to misuse the level system."

"And Gloria tattled on me," he sighed. "Happy?"

"It's a pity it took you to our second to last session to get on board, Doctor," Root smiled, and for a moment one could be excused for not noticing how ill the withdrawal was making her. The idea of Dr. Carmichael getting called to his boss's office to explain why he was being a prick to his own patient was infinitely satisfying. "But better late than never."

Dr. Charmaical sighed, and rubbed at his forehead.

"So… third goal…" she tilted her head. He tried to hide his surprise, startled that she didn't seem to be fighting the matter at all. Instead of losing respect for him when he conceded defeat, she was suddenly compliant. "Well we only have a week to work on it… so let's see… what could be visibly achieved in that time. Alright… considering I anticipate being unwell into the beginning of next week, why don't I make it a goal to do all of the written work for CBT group, whether I can make it there or not. Just have someone drop it off and I'll do it in bed if I'm too sick to get up."

"Seriously?"

"Not good?"

"No… I mean yes… I mean, it's a fine goal. I just…"

"If you can be reasonable, so can I," she replied, hopping off the windowsill and sauntering toward the door. She peered out timidly into the hallway, and then once she ascertained that none of the other patients were in the hall, she headed out. "I guess you can be trained after all," she chided over her shoulder as she left.


	23. Ugly Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tina reveals some stuff... all of it ugly... but only some of it bad...

It was a good thing Root had been able to avail herself of a shower during fourth block on Friday, as by Saturday morning she wasn't even feeling up to getting out of bed. The pamphlet said 'flu-like symptoms' but she was pretty sure the flu had never been this bad, and she was learning first hand what ' _electric shock sensations'_ were. The touch sensitivity had gone, but in it's place was photophobia and tinnitus, and she still didn't feel like she could hold much of anything down. To make matters worse Root hadn't slept more than two hours at a go since she'd been out like a light for four and a half after the panic attack on Thursday.

By 9:30 am Operation Grandma was in full swing, but Root was still entirely unaware of it, not being aware of much at all through the brain fog. Since she had only managed to fall asleep around quarter to eight, and she wasn't on anything at the moment, they didn't bother waking her for the morning meds and vitals, and she'd slept clear through breakfast, waking around quarter to ten to find buttered toast, a carton of whole milk, and an apple juice box on her nightstand left by she knew not who, (but of course it was Dory.) Just the smell of the butter was too much, so she pushed the paper plate directly into the trash, but she did sit up and get down some of the milk using the straw left next to it, before the nausea stopped her and she laid back down in the bed frustratedly. She knew she wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, but she had nothing to read, and there were no televisions in the patient rooms, so all she had to look forward to was being bored out of her mind until she was tired enough to catch another couple hours of sleep.

"Can we come in? Tina has something she needs to say to you," Roger knocked on the door and peeked in.

"Roger?" she replied, not bothering to open her eyes, especially with the blinds not doing a fantastic job of keeping the sun out of her eyes.

"Yeah… sorry to interrupt, it's just that Tina needs to say something. Now."

"We can come back later," Tina said.

"No… we can't." he replied, pulling her into the doorway by the arm.

"I… you're not interrupting. Being sick is pretty boring," Root shifted sat up a little in bed leaning against the headboard, "What's up?"

Rogers hand moved to the small of Tina's back and pressed… she stepped forward with him flanking her all the way to the middle of the room.

"I… meant what I said in group on Tuesday," Tina said, "I really do admire you so much. You never get scared, or sad, or upset or anything, I mean I guess you get angry because Anger Management, but you're so sure of yourself, and whatever happens you just keep-"

"Tina… Tina stop," Root held up a hand, "You're making me dizzy… and you have the wrong idea about all this," she sighed, "which is mostly my fault. I prefer for most people to have the wrong idea.  I mean you're right that I'm sure of myself. I know what I'm doing, but... never sad, or upset, or scared?  With my screwed up genetics, I get the whole Chinese buffet of horrible feelings, including some I'm pretty sure 'normal' people never have to deal with, I just don't let them affect me. It's not some inborn immunity, it's a lot of hard work. I have a very lot of practice in handling myself… myself. It's a skill, not a trait."

"Okay but that doesn't mean it's not awesome."

"No, what it means is it's attainable."

"It's also maladaptive," Roger said, "You don't want to learn that skill…"

"I happen to think it works very well," Root countered, "At least until you get too sick to _apply_ the skill anymore," she laughed weakly, "as the past few days have shown…"

"Yeah… well um… I thought maybe this might help," Tina said, timidly, "Lauren helped me order it on Wednesday." She produced a purple stuffed toy from behind her back, a cat-like thing with skinny arms with one eye and a sewn on  X where the other should have been.

"Is that an Uglydoll?"

"One of the new ones: they call him the Handsome Panther," Tina smiled nervously, taking a few more steps toward the bed and thrusting it toward her. "Purple is your favorite color, right?"

"I… thank you," Root said awkwardly, taking what was handed to her. The thought behind it was actually really touching, but it had been so long since she'd received a spontaneous gift, one that she hadn't deliberately manipulated the giver into providing, that she didn't really know how to handle it. It was becoming clear to her that Tina was anxious that her gift would not be well received.

Root didn't know what to say to reassure Tina, so instead she concentrated on showing appreciation for the doll itself, running her hands across the familiar Uglydoll fleece, a finger over the bilateral head protrusions… ears in this case… she always preferred the ones with bilateral protrusions to those with one or three in the middle of the top of the head. She gave it a brief eskimo kiss on it's non-existent nose but deliberately held herself back from smushing her face into the top of it's head, however tempting that might be. When she looked back up… Tina hadn't relaxed any… even though she was fairly sure she'd made it clear she did like the gift.

"Are you okay Tina? You seem… scared."

Tina backed up from the bed, slowly, until she bumped into Roger who had stepped behind her to block her path.

"Alright Tina, I let you give her the doll," Roger said, under his breath, "now _tell her_ or I will."

Root's eyes narrowed considerably, as she realized that in her foggy state she'd failed to read that Tina's fear was a guilty fear. That's why Roger had come into the room with her like that, his hand on the small of her back. It wasn't chivalry; he was trying to make sure she didn't bolt. She didn't want to be here… and Lauren was nowhere to be found, which wasn't normal.

"Tell me what?"

"It's not like Roger thinks," Tina said, defensively. "I promise."

"Then probably you should tell her before I do," he said, with constrained anger.

"Roger stop, you're making her more scared to say it… whatever it is," Root shifted in her bed, sitting up straighter and trying to take some control of the conversation, and get Roger to ease up off Tina.

"I talked with Dana about you when you weren't there… Tuesday… after group."

"What, she want you to reign me in or something?" Root scoffed.

"No. I just… Roger thinks it was bad, but I thought it would _help_ and now I'm not sure anymore, but _you're_ not going to like it either way..."

"What?" Root replied flatly.

"Because she didn't think you could understand Shannon and it didn't seem like you were going to tell her, and Dana didn't understand. She thinks - thought - you're an asshole, and I wanted her to know you're _not_ and maybe if she knew what happened then she could help you better, because she can't help anyone if she doesn't know what happened-"

"What?" She wanted Tina to get to the point.

"She told Dana you _have_ experienced the same kind of thing as Shannon."

"What?" Root turned back to Tina with a glare, having glanced to Roger when he spoke, daring her to explain herself.

"I know _you_ don't think it's trauma, but it wasn't right what your mom did to you…"

"Did to me? She didn't do _anything_ to me," Root glared at Tina voice frighteningly measured. It might have been less disturbing if she were shouting. "And what she _didn't_ do, which you evidently think she should have? That was a part of her _illness_ . That was not within her _control_ . She did the _best_ she could with what she had. What _you_ did is a choice," she drew her legs up underneath her, giving her more height in the bed, "and that's what's _not right_. That wasn't yours to tell."

"I'm not saying it's her fault, but that doesn't make it okay. You were little and you were suffering and that's neglect," Tina protested defensively panicked, "I just wanted to do something to help, since you-"

"Since I what? This is supposed to be some kind of _thanks_? I stick my neck out for you and you _attack_ my mother?" she brandished what would have been a fist at Tina, were the doll not clenched in her grasp.

"It's not an attack, it's… damnit I was afraid this would happen," she whined, nearing tears.

"That should have been your _first_ clue you were in the wrong," Root tossed off the blankets, moving to stand. She had assumed her caustic words would have been enough to drive Tina from her presence, but it wasn't working.

"I'm _always_ afraid though," she cried, "and even scared I did it _anyway_ , because I wanted to be brave like you are!"

"That is the stupidest thing I've heard in weeks, and in this place that's really saying someth-," Root swung her legs out of bed and stood abruptly, intending to use her height to her advantage in intimidation, but immediately lost her balance and fell over, splayed out on the floor in a most undignified manner.

"Robin!" Tina lunged forward to try and help her up but was beaten soundly around the head with the doll.

"Get off! Get off!" Root snapped, reorienting herself and sitting up in a kneel that might have been described as seiza were she in a dojo, but which at the moment was just the most dignified way she could find to comport herself on the floor. "I don't need any more of your _help_." She also knew, as dizzy as she'd just become that any attempt to stand would just plant her right back on the ground, but Tina didn't need to know that. Her frustration with the situation was channeled, as such things often were with Root, into her hands, where she was digging her nails tightly into the midsection of the panther. Her other hand found one of the arms, and yanked, tearing it clean off. "You wouldn't know what help was if someone stuffed it down your throat."

"I'm sorry… I just thought…" Tina started, "I really didn't mean to mess things up like this."

"Get out of here and take your stupid… _dollie..._ with you!" Root threw the arm and then the rest of the doll quite literally back in Tina's face.

"I… I…" Tina gathered up the parts of the doll and backed out the door the way she'd come.

As the door shut behind her, Root slid off her heels, kneeling more comfortably and supporting herself with both arms. The exertion expended since hitting the floor wasn't helping the lightheadedness in the slightest, and now she was completely exhausted.

"You okay?" Roger asked, leaning over, one hand on the foot of the bed to brace himself, "Physically I mean?"

"Yeah," Root nodded, "I just need a minute for the room to stop spinning." She took a few deep breaths. "Did Lauren know?"

"I don't think so," Roger said, "she wasn't there when I found out though, so I can't say for sure."

"How long did _you_ know?"

"Maybe… half an hour? I could have come right away, and if that's wrong I'm sorry. It took a while to get her to come with me. It seemed like it was important for her to be there when you found out… to really understand how bad she fucked up."

"Thanks," Root said.

"You sure you don't want some help up?" Roger said.

"I'm good, I'm good. I just need to go slow. It's not a strength problem, or pain I just stood up too fast and got way light headed… and dizzy. Postural hypotension. It's in the pamphlet."

"Why is Tina crying?" A tech named Oliver appeared at the door.

"Heh," Root chuckled a little.

"Aaaand… why are you on the floor laughing?"

"Hypotension, and Tina is crying because she _communicated_ over _family issues_ she shouldn't have."

Roger giggled as well now, finally following the joke. Root didn't take either of them, but Communication and Family Issues were the groups Oliver led.

"I'm sorry… I… I realize there's a joke here, but can I get a clearer answer?" Oliver asked, uncomfortably.

"She's upset because she got called out for messing up," Roger shrugged, "She told someone something that was said in confidence… and which wasn't a risk to anyone," he added quickly, lest Oliver draw the wrong conclusion. "She'll get over it. She probably went to go see Dodger… he's here right?" Roger referred to the visiting therapy dog that showed up on Saturday and Sunday mornings. He was so popular that people had to sign up in advance, to make sure they didn't overwhelm the dog, and Tina was signed up every Saturday for the foreseeable future. It wasn't permissible to sign up for both days in a weekend, to ensure there were slots for others.

"I'll check on that… did you need help up?" Oliver addressed the latter solely to Root.

"I'm good," she replied forcing a smile, "I'll get up on my own in a bit."

Oliver shook his head but left anyway, and Root reached up to the nightstand, grasping after that carton of milk she'd started on earlier. Roger moved to help her get it, but stopped mid step when she cast him a forbidding glance, letting her fumble and eventually get it on her own, bringing it down to her lips for a few more sips. The whole, low blood pressure thing could only be helped by introducing more liquid to her body.

"She ever pull this stuff with you?" Root asked.

"I'd have warned you if she had…" half-sat on the edge of the foot of her bed, "but I guess I didn't give her any openings. I don't really do the whole, withholding in therapy thing anymore. It's been years. I know it just prolongs how long I'm stuck in here any given time."

"It's not withholding because it's not relevant," Root shrugged.

"It's relevant. It wasn't hers to tell, but it is relevant, whether or not it was right or trauma or whatever," he added the last quickly.  "It lends credibility to the stuff you say about that stuff. You did get brushed off because you supposedly couldn't understand."

"The credibility is not worth the energy I'm going to have to spend now fending off Dana trying to convince me my mother's a crappy parent. I've been through this, years ago with the school counselor. Why do psychiatrists always want to blame the mother?"

"I blame Freud," Roger said.

"Oh no no no," Dory shuffled into the room, "Have you fallen out of bed?"

"I'm good," Root attempted to wave her off.

"Uh oh…" Roger stood and stepped away from the bed, "Dory's gone full grandma."

"This won't do," Dory snatched away the milk, sitting it on the desk and tugged at Root's arms, trying to get her to take her hands, "We have to get you back in bed. Up up up!"

"I'm okay, Roger would you tell her I'm okay?"

"Won't do much good," he said, as Dory gave up trying to get Root to cooperate and started trying to pull her up by the wrists.

"You're going to hurt yourself Dory, you're ancient, _stop_."

"Don't you fuss about me. Can't have you down on the floor like that," Dory replied, "You're sick, and I'm a nurse."

"Oh for Pete sake, Roger will you help me up before she breaks a hip?" Root pulled one of her wrists free from Dory's grasp and reached out to Roger. He moved forward, and took the hand, and Dory released Root's other wrist to allow him to do it. The point wasn't that she had to do everything herself after all. If 'Robin's friends wanted to help as well, she wasn't going to complain, and truth be told, Roger probably was stronger and in better shape than she was. Root pulled herself upright and sat on the bed, dusting off the legs of her pajamas. "Okay… I'm in the bed, okay?"

Dory reached into her pocket and popped an electric thermometer in Root's mouth, producing a blood pressure cuff from her apron.

"Serrsly Drrrry?" Root mumbled around the thermometer, "Thz iz obrkill."

"You missed morning vitals," Dory replied, "This is what I came in here for in the first place."

Root sighed deeply and rubbed at her temple with her free hand, as Dory wrapped the cuff around her other arm. She was right about that much, and Root knew if she talked during blood pressure Dory would lose count on her pulse and have to start over. It had happened before.

"Normal temperature, and your blood pressure's on the low end of normal," Dory said, scribbling on her notepad. "Lets just rest a little before I take your pulse. You exerted yourself quite a bit getting up here."

"Not really," Root replied, "I'm… I'm tired, so I'll probably just chill here today, but I don't really need any help."

"Mmmmhmm," Dory acknowledged noncommittally. Roger giggled.

"What's so funny?" Root asked.

"Nothing…" Roger replied, evasively.

"So you've been tired, and I know you're having trouble eating… are you having any other problematic symptoms with your withdrawal today?"

"Just the photophobia," Root replied, leaving out the electric shocks and the ringing in her ears. "Another reason to stay in here, I can keep the lights out and the blinds drawn, although they're not doing a great job at the moment," she pouted, giving Dory her very best doe eyes in an attempt to manipulate her into doing something about that.

"Oh we can fix that," Dory said, "Close your eyes for a minute while I adjust them."  

"Oh you needn't," Root closed her eyes, and covered them with her hands for good measure, entirely unaware that her manipulation hadn't even been needed.

"I want to," Dory replied, "Really, you're ill right now Robin. If you need anything, just ask." She turned the blinds wand to reverse the vertical blinds so that any light escaping was shunted toward the dresser and bathroom, rather than the bed.

"I couldn't," Root replied, "But thank you."

"You can open your eyes now… and let's do your pulse rate," Dory crossed back over and took one of Root's wrists, laying two fingers across it, while staring intently off into space. Root glanced over at Roger, who had stopped giggling, but was still staring amused, and gave him a quizzical look. He gave a knowing smile and then looked off innocently into the corner.

"A little elevated, and a little weak. You should probably try and drink more of the things I brought you, I think you're getting dehydrated again. Rhetta said we should watch out for that while you're in withdrawal," she picked up the milk off the desk and handed it back to Root. "And until you finish both these drinks, you stay in this bed, you hear?" She pulled back the blankets and gestured for Root to put her feet up.

"Aye Aye Captain," Root snarked, and raised her milk as in toast as she pivoted into the bed, and then reflexively shrunk away from Dory patting her on the shoulder.

"Good good… you need anything at all you use the call bell, alright?" she indicated the switch plate sized panel with two buttons that was mounted over the nightstand, the larger one was green and said 'CALL' and the smaller was white and said 'CANCEL.' Root had mostly ignored it until now… and would probably continue to do so. Dory smiled and bustled out of the room, and Root turned her attention back to Roger.

"Alright, what the hell?"

"You're getting the Dory treatment this weekend," he giggled.

"What does that even mean?"

"When people get sick Dory goes into Grandma mode. Usually it's like, the flu, or a stomach bug or something, but it looks like jumping off your taper and making yourself sick counts too."

"How do we make her stop?"

"You don't. I've never heard of anyone being able to stop her. If it's any consolation, it's kind of a known phenomena. Like a natural disaster. It even happened to Andrew."

"That's… only half comforting."

"Oh come on, indulge a little. It's like being sick as a kid again, all camped out on the couch while your mom dotes all- you never had that. Did you." Roger facepalmed. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I never needed it," Root smirked, "I can take care of myself. Not just flu either. Ear infections, strep throat, you name it. Pretty much handled my own chicken pox in 2nd grade, school nurse sent me home, told me to get some calamine lotion on the spots to stop the itching. I handled the rest. Dealt with my own pneumonia in 8th grade too."

"Pneumonia?"

"It was a walking pneumonia," she shrugged. "Actually went to the doctor for that one. I was old enough to go on my own. Got antibiotics."

"I hope you realize, that doting or no doting, it's falling down on the job pretty hard to not take your kid to the doctor for strep," Roger said.

"I never said she was perfect," Root replied, suddenly very interested in the text on the side of her milk carton. "It's just that what she did fail at was unavoidable. No point pointing fingers and blame around for something that literally could not have been handled better. I'm still here, aren't I? So it's ok: no harm, no foul."

"I guess," Roger said, sitting back down on the end of the bed.

"Oh don't you start with the pity too," Root sighed, sipping from her milk.

"I'm not," Roger said, "It's just hard to wrap my head around sometimes, how you're okay with all this stuff. Cause… that's not a skill. Like you can think something sucks and learn to deal with it… but if you don't even think it sucks… that's weird."

"Of course I think it sucks," Root shook her head and rolled her eyes, and then winced. "I just don't get all… messed up over it. It's like… it also sucks when the donuts shop is out of your favorite flavor, but what are you going to do about it? Mope?" Decide that humanity is, by and large a bunch of useless jerks, or else at least one of the healthy, skilled adults in Bishop Texas would have stepped in to help her out taking care of Beth.

"What was that?"

"Me figuring out that the vertigo isn't helped by shaking my head," Root replied, scrunching her face. "Feels like my brain hitting the inside of my skull."

"Let Dory see that and she'll make you lie down," Roger said.

"Noted," Root replied. "Probably just need to drink more."

"Anyways, the point is, you can't stop her, so you may as well enjoy being pampered for a weekend," he smirked, "You know… like a sick people spa day."

"That's… a harder trick than you're making it sound," Root replied. "I mean, you go to a spa, you pay bunches of money, and people treat you like some kind of royalty. This… is nothing like that. This is being stuck in bed while someone does you pity favors. One is fun. The other is just humiliating."

"It's not pity, it's her job. She's a nurse and she's nursing."

"She's a psych nurse, not a medical ward nurse, besides which it's weird with them sometimes too. They do things you can't do for yourself because you're too sick, or your arm's messed up, or whatever. But when they try and do things that you can do? That's just insulting."

"She's a caretaker. Caretakers like to feel needed."

"They like to have people _indebted_ to them," Root corrected. "It's like Tina with the stupid doll. Create a debt of gratitude and then drop the bullshit bombshell."

"I'm pretty sure Lauren helped her order that on Wednesday… after the thing with Alex when you were banging your head on the wall. It just didn't come in till this morning. Lauren has Prime: 2 day shipping."

"And she messed up on Tuesday, the day before that."

"But she didn't _know_ she messed up till I told her. When she mentioned it at breakfast, she really seemed to think she'd done something good," he shook his head, "I'm not saying she didn't mess up… she fucked up hardcore. I'm just saying the Uglydoll thing was genuine."

"I don't need that sort of thing anyway. Never should have told her about that. She'll probably spread that around too."

"If she does it'll only be to the credentialed staff," Roger replied, "She's only _half_ stupid. Thought it was okay because Dana's a licensed therapist, and not just a tech."

"She'd have screwed up less telling some of the techs than telling Dana. Not all of them mind you, but like… Danny or Jerry wouldn't do anything stupid with information like that. I guess the withdrawal thing is a blessing in some ways. Probably give me good excuse not to go to Dana's group again before I get out of here."

"Oh right… you've got your hearing a week from Monday… that'll make things a _little_ less awkward."

"Awkward?"

"I'm pretty cheesed off at Tina, but she'll probably still wind up at our table… down the end. Which is way awkward, but probably we're, me and Lauren, gonna be able to get over it eventually. I wouldn't blame you if you _never_ forgave her."

Root's milk straw made a well known slurping sound that indicated the carton was empty.

"Fair enough… just make sure it's long enough," Root smirked, "Make her squirm enough she never thinks of pulling this shit with anyone else. Don't just… get over it the day I leave, okay?"

"I promise," Roger said, smiling as he stood up from the end of the bed, "Now that you're done with milk, you probably want to lay down some," he said, and the look on Root's face in reply was one of reluctant agreement. "I'll check back later eh? Make sure you don't get too bored."

"Thanks Rodge," she replied, putting the milk carton on the end table, and sliding down a little deeper under the covers. As the door closed behind him, she tried to get comfortable in the bed, slowly writhing into different contortions, primarily because actual tossing and turning would only aggravate her headache.

When she finally settled, with a deep sigh melting into the mattress, she stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about how bored she was, or how much that stupid doll would help right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay two things: One, we're not going AU, so I think you all know how Root's hearing is going to turn out, but I wanted to remind people in case they were worried we were nearing the end of the fic that she certainly wasn't let out by the court in the canon. Two, don't fret too much about Tina. That'll get sorted... ... ...eventually.


	24. Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root is characteristically stubborn about (not) taking care of herself...

Root couldn't say how long she lay there, trying unsuccessfully to sleep. Partway through, prompted by The Machine, she'd sipped up about half of the juicebox without sitting up, but the pain was getting progressively worse, both physically and mentally. Her spine ached from laying down too long, but sitting up was worse. She had barely stood in at least 20 hours, but her calves felt like she'd been running up stairs for hours and every other major muscle group was sore as well, if not as bad as her legs. Her brain was jumping all over the place and she couldn't be sure at this point if it was the withdrawal or a secondary side effect caused by sleep deprivation. It was blessedly dark now that Dory had adjusted the blinds, but even through the closed door she could hear every word and every footstep in the hallway, and she was seriously starting to regret not taking this slower like Dr. Leipman had advised. Root had been certain she could handle this, like every other illness or injury in her life, on her own terms, but at this point she was becoming increasingly anxious that if they offered her a dose, she'd take it just to make this stop, and wind up having to go through this again, which was starting to feel like an inevitable self fulfilling prophecy because she was bordering on panicked over it, and panic would be just one more brick on the pile.

She tried to focus all of her concentration, what concentration she could muster, on feeling her toes. They toes weren't in pain, and she could focus on the texture of her socks so long as she kept them in slow movement against the soft fabric. This was familiar, the part of being sick or injured where the inescapable omnipresence discomfort somehow granted her the ability to take control of perceptual focus and deliberately drive it away from things she didn't want to feel. It didn't entirely work. She still felt everything at least somewhat, but she could choose which channel was loudest, try and jack up the volume and block out as _much_ of the other sensations and thoughts as possible. _Socks. Soft socks. Tipity tips of toes and nice soft socks…_

"Robin?" The downside of this state was severely reduced situational awareness. Dory was at her bedside hand gentle on Root's forehead. It jarred her for a moment, yanking focus. It was nice… but then it was gone, and she was tumbling, fumbling to regain the focus needed to divert attention from the multitude of unpleasant sensations currently plaguing her. "Can you take the thermometer for me again honey? I think you're developing a fever…"

"Mmm… what time is it?" Root murmured. She was sluggish to respond, not out of drowsiness, but because of the general disruption of cognitive function.

"It's 12:30. Lunch," Dory said, "I brought you some more toast, but you're looking feverish and your forehead is very warm, so before you eat, can you please take the thermometer?"

Root sighed, and opened her mouth slightly to accept the digital thermometer. She ran her tongue along the slightly sharp seam in the plastic sleeve that encased it. It wasn't soft, like the socks, or Dory's hand, but sometimes it was easier to focus on something a little more stinging. It was 'louder' to start with, and still hurt less than everything else. _Scratchy scratchy… sharp and stinging, tastes like a plastic bag…_

"Wait… is this this morning's toast?" Dory noticed the slices Root had discarded that morning, "So all you've had today is the milk, and," she lifted the juice box, "Half the apple juice? Sweetheart, you must be half starved." Dory sighed, "I suppose you're not going to want this toast either," she indicated the plate she'd put on the desk as she came in. Root shook her head slightly. "Well you have to eat _something_ , even if you are nauseous."

Root rolled her eyes toward the wall and kept them there, stewing in dissatisfaction, and trying to tune the nurse out. Why couldn't Dory just leave her to her suffering? Instead there were thermometers and toast and questions and company.

"Mmm… you _are_ running a fever," Dory said, "They're not kidding about the flu-like symptoms."

"Heh," under the covers Root took the hem of her shirt between two fingers, concentrating her attention there on the rough stitching in lieu of the now gone thermometer. _Long. Rough. Lip catches on your nail… fucking ow._ All this shifting of attention was making it a lot less effective, and every time Dory spoke it got harder.

"Can you have a bit more of the juice for me?" Dory picked up the juice box and maneuvered the straw near to Root's lips. On principal, she refused to take it. Ironically, if she'd only been pretending to be sick she would eat this stuff up. Manipulating this kind of treatment out of someone could be fun, getting someone to act at her beck and call, but it wasn't something she could enjoy when she was actually in pain. Now it was just impeding her ability to handle it. "No? That's okay, we can try again in a bit."

Dory backed up a few steps and sat down in Root's desk chair, smiling sadly. Root squinted at her confused. Was she just going to sit there and _watch_ her suffering? Couldn't she just leave? Was this some kind of punishment for not taking the juice?

"What are you doing?"

"Watching over you to make sure you are okay, so I can take care of you if you get any sicker. You're already doing pretty poorly. Why didn't you use the call bell earlier?"

"I didn't need you," Root groaned, "I still don't."

"You have a fever Robin."

"Barely. I've had fevers before Dory. I know what I'm doing." She tossed her arm over her face in indignation, covering her eyes. "Can't you at least leave me _alone_?"

"No, I can't," Dory said, "You're on line of sight, medical observation, not a level drop. You're running a fever now and that puts you at greater risk of a seizure."

"But Dr. Leipman said-"

"That he didn't think you'd have a lethal one. That doesn't preclude you from falling out of bed, or banging your head on something if you have a lesser one. You're on seizure watch. Sorry sweetheart."

"I hate my life," she replied, with all the sincerity of a teenager who's just been told to clean their room.

"Even so, here we are," Dory shrugged. "I can move further away if that helps at all, work on a crossword over by the dresser. I can understand why a person wouldn't want to just be… stared at. Some people like to know they're being watched over, others find it intrusive."

"How about you move all the way back to the nurses station," Root grumbled. "I promise you I'm not going to blame anyone if I fall out of the bed. I just want to be _alone_. Really alone."

"That's the one thing I can't give you Robin," Dory sighed.

"Because I have a fever?"

"Mmhmm."

"Okay then," Root inhaled deeply and slowly sat up in the bed. After her little tumble earlier she didn't want to risk falling down again. That would just give Dory more ammunition, and if she didn't get up fast enough on her own, Dory would probably try and help her up again, which was ridiculous and probably just going to get the both of them hurt.

"Trying to sit up some? Do you need another pillow maybe?" Dory asked.

"No," Root replied, shifting the blankets and dangling her legs off the bed.

"Do you need help?" Dory asked, "To get to the bathroom?"

"I'm not _going_ to the bathroom," Root replied, slowly standing, one hand on the nightstand to make sure she didn't fall again. Once she was up, everything would be fine, she was certain. It was just standing up too fast that was a problem. "I'm going to Rhetta's office, and get a fever reducer."

"You don't need to do that," Dory said, standing and crossing the room, "we can get a tech to bring it."

"The pamphlet says it's important to move anyway, even if it feels horrible," Root replied, taking her sweater down from the hook on the back of the door and putting it on. "Exercise."

"You're a fall risk Robin," Dory stood and approached Root, as Root opened the door to her room, and flinched against the light and sound of the hallway. "I advise against this, strongly."

"For the last time," Root replied, "I didn't faint. I just stood up too fast. Besides which, I've done way more _risky_ things and come out fine. I'll be fine." She stepped out into the hallway, keeping her eyes open by sheer force of will even  though the light was daggers in them. As she walked, she thought back to the time a few years ago when she'd been winged in the right leg by a bullet on a job. She'd driven 40 minutes with an ace bandage wrapped around the wound, to get to a doctor she knew wouldn't ask questions. When it eventually hurt too much to do the pedals with her injured leg, she'd tucked it up on the seat and drove awkwardly with her left. If she could do that, she could do this, it's just a walk down a hall. Nothing here could injure her anyways. She wasn't bleeding from the leg. It was just sensory overload. Too much light, too much noise. It didn't _mean_ anything.

"Hey Rhetta," she smiled unconvincingly, arriving at the medical exam room, and leaning on the doorjamb trying to look casual, and not as if it were for stability… which it was.

"Robin!" Rhetta looked up in surprise from her paperwork. "You look terrible."

"Thanks," Root laughed weakly. "You're looking pretty great today too."

"What do you need?"

"Acetaminophen, if you have any. Dory says I have a fever," she thumbed over her shoulder at the nurse who'd trailed after the whole way.

"Dory also says to stay in your bed," Dory added. "You're going to faint or trip."

"Did I?" Root replied, smugly.

Dory and Rhetta exchanged a knowing glance. Root was neither the first nor the last patient they'd have who insisted on pressing onward when they should be lying the heck down. Of course usually that came with a very different set of symptoms than Root's. She wasn't driven by an exercise compulsion, or trying to hide weakness from an eating disorder, or a self inflicted injury. This wasn't typical of the 'tough guy' problem patients. By this point Andrew would have been crying like a baby and insisting on any kind of medical he could get. Her behavior earlier had been motivated by a desire to get off the meds, but with everyone on board 'Robin' no longer had any proper motive to deceive them about her health. She was just unreasonably determined to assert independence. It was juvenile… like most of her coping mechanisms.

It was clear to both that 'Robin' was unaware that she wasn't even close to successfully playing at being 'fine.' She'd managed it very successfully through all of Wednesday, up till the panic attack on Thursday, and fairly well through a not insubstantial portion of Friday, despite her reticence, but now you could see from a mile away that she was unwell. 'Robin' was smart enough that she had to know she wasn't hiding it _entirely_ , but also smart enough that if she knew the full extent of what was slipping through, she'd stop wasting energy on a rouse that wasn't working. She was paler than usual, with heavy circles under her eyes, and despite an upright posture, with shoulders back and head held nominally high (although it was presently cocked to the side, as it often was) her knees were locked and her stance squared with feet shoulder width apart, in contrast to her usual more fluid and feminine way of standing. Her nail polish was chipped to the point where a few fingers were entirely bare, which she would normally have rectified long before. She was incredibly fastidious about that. But the most telling thing was the way her eyes darted around anxiously, with unfocused pupils tight as pinpricks and she couldn't quite hide the flinching that occurred every time a door closed in the hallway, or someone spoke to loud.

"No, you haven't fallen… yet," Rhetta replied, turning to her cabinet, and dispensing the acetaminophen into a paper pill cup. "Doesn't mean you won't. Here."

Root took the medicine gratefully, noting with a glance that it was exactly the recommended dose. Of course it was. She would have liked a little more, but she was pretty sure they weren't going to give it to her, not in a hospital. Rhetta handed her a cup of water and she downed the medicine, grateful for the door frame when tossing her head back made her extremely dizzy for a moment.

"Thank you Rhetta," Root smiled. "I guess that's a bridge I'll cross _if_ I come to it."

Root left the office, turned and continued further down the hall, not back to her room but toward the dining room. She wasn't allowed in the patient kitchen, but she knew that there was always left over fruit on the buffet for quite some time after a meal. Rhetta gave Dory a look of sympathy as she sighed and padded along behind Root. She was going to be a tough one to keep an eye on, and even harder to keep safe.

"Robin, can we please go back to your room now? Or maybe the couch in the day room? I really need for you to sit down for me please," Dory said.

"You wanted me to eat," Root replied, "I'm getting food."

"I can get it _for_ you."

"I'm sure you could, but it would be a waste of your time and effort, as is following me like this… but that I can't stop you from, and at least this way you're not tying up a tech to keep me on line of sight while you go to fetch things," Root didn't turn her head to speak, cognizant by this point that quickly moving her head was a great way to lose orientation at the moment. "Don't you have other duties? I mean… one person can't monopolize a nurse's whole day. That's not fair to the other patients."

"Don't worry about them," Dory replied, "You only need to think about yourself right now."

"I _am_ thinking about myself," Root replied with a deep sigh stopping at the door of the dining room, "I'm thinking I don't know what you're up to, and I don't know what any of this is going to cost me down the line, so I'm declining your assistance."

"This isn't a transaction."

"Everything is a transaction," Root countered. It was like she told Roger, caretakers, people like Dory, they dole out unsolicited help by way of accumulating debt from others.  It was an insidious kind of manipulation because they collected capitol without even knowing what they were going to cash it in for later. That sort of thing set off alarm bells all over her mind. Nothing good is ever just handed to you. If you didn't put your blood and sweat and tears into it, then it's not yours, and taking it will only land you in trouble down the line. People will even _say_ outright that there's no strings attached, but that's a lie. The only option is to decline as vehemently as possible.

"Well that's a sad state of affairs to live in," Dory's voice was dripping with unwanted pity. "It must be a very hard thing not to be able to believe in altruism."

"Maybe, but I'd rather live in the _real_ world," Root countered, taking a superior tone to deflect the insult she took Dory's tone as, and turning her back on the nurse to enter the dining room. "Haven't you ever the phrase 'if it's too good to be true, it probably is'? Everything has a price. No free lunch. You want something? You work for it."

"Funny thing to say considering your reputation for manipulation… and crime."

"Manipulation may not be the sort of work that pops to mind, but it _is_ work," Root smirked to herself, crossing the dining room to take a banana and a red apple from the basket left on the end of the lunch buffet. The rest of the food had been taken away, and the covers put back on the cooler and heating sections of the buffet leaving it smooth on top. Root held them up to Dory, as if to prove that she was in fact getting fruit, and then started back for her room, a little quicker than she had come, anticipating the relief of the dark and the quiet. "It's a skill that you have to learn, and practice, and put effort into… as are several forms of crime… safes don't crack themselves for instance."

"You ever crack a safe?"

"Not much of a thief really," Root replied, with a little twitch of her nose. It was a lie in technically but not in spirit. Fraud of course is technically thievery, but that wasn't what they were really talking about. Safe cracking, lock picking, most forms of conventional breaking and entering, really weren't in her skillset. The closest she came to that was a slight knack for the small lift. Pick-pocketing external pockets, lifting small items off table displays, switching one keydrive for another right in front of the mark and handing them back the dummy. "A little shoplifting, but mostly my record is for getting into fights. They called it assault, but that's only because I _won_." Root spouted the party line of Robin's convictions, from the rap sheet Finch had made up.

Once back in the room, Root placed the fruit on her nightstand, and went to take her sweater back off and put it on the door but thought better of it after a moment. Instead she sat down on the edge of the bed, holding it balled up in her lap, and closed her eyes while Dory closed the door, giving herself a few seconds to recover from all the sensory assault that she'd subjected herself to by venturing out. Dory sat back down in the desk chair, tilting her head and trying to catch Root's eye, engage with her.

"Still with us Robin?"

"Lower volume please, and I'm fine, my eyes just hurt," Root replied, without opening her eyes. "Like I said earlier, photophobia. Why do they call that a phobia anyway, it's a pain, not a fear."

"I don't actually know," Dory replied. "Why do they call it homophobia when it's not a fear it's a prejudice."

"That one's easy: dodging accountability," Root replied. "It's easier for them to pretend to be afraid of, I don't know… catching the gay cooties, or getting hit on by some gay guy, than it is for them to admit they just hate what they don't understand." She reached blindly for the fruit, grasping the banana and peeling it without looking. The apple was preferable, but the banana required less chewing, and would go down faster, placate Dory.

"Hmm… likely," Dory nodded, but Root didn't see, eyes closed as they were. "It can be difficult to admit to morally objectionable feelings."

"Never had a problem with that one myself," Root shrugged, cheek full of banana. "I know I _like_ to hurt people and I don't much care who knows it. I'm always going to be sadistic up in here," she tapped her temple, "but what you think isn't nearly as important as what you _do_."

"You like to… well _would_ like to kill them as well," Dory said, "or so I'm told."

"No. I _like_ to _hurt_ people, hence the assault. I don't feel much of _anything_ about killing them. It doesn't bother me, but it's not pleasurable either. I just have a _belief_ that it's necessary, that some people _need_ to die. You don't have to worry though Dory," she added at the end after swallowing, and opening her eyes, so Dory could hopefully see she was sincere. "You're not one of them."

"Well that's a comfort," Dory smiled indulgently.

"Besides which, at least according to pretty much everyone here, and _her_ ," Root gestured to her pillow, under which she was keeping the phone, "that's a _false_ belief and getting rid of it is the whole point of all this. So even if I did think you needed to die I wouldn't risk actually doing it. I've got my petition hearing a week from Monday."

"How's the banana?" Dory changed the subject.

"A little overripe," Root had slowed down considerably with half a banana left.

"Careful. Don't make yourself throw up."

"Not in the cards," Root replied, "That would just give you another excuse to keep hovering even after the Tylenol kicks in and the fever goes. See the plan is, I eat the fruit, I drink the juice, some water, the fever goes down, and you leave me be."

"You're pretty determined to get rid of me."

"It's not personal. I'm pretty determined to be _alone_ ," Root sighed. "Everything hurts. Light hurts. Sound hurts. Laying down hurts. Sitting up hurts. Thinking hurts. Eating… eating doesn't hurt much, but it _is_ queasy making."

"Talking?"

"Hurts my ears, not my throat," Root replied, "But very little has ever stopped me talking. I never know when to keep my mouth shut."

"That's not what I've heard," Dory said.

"I'm sure you'll find that what you've heard is I'm keeping my mouth shut when they wish I wouldn't… not when it's actually appropriate."

"Fair enough."

For a time the only sound in the room was that of Root chewing on her banana, she reached under her pillow for her phone to check the time. She'd taken the Tylenol on a mostly empty stomach, so she figured it would work within the hour, but she was impatient to get rid of Dory.

"She talking to you?" Dory asked, glancing at the phone.

"Just checking the time," Root replied. "And she won't talk on speaker. In order to hear her, I'd have to hold it properly," she held the phone up for a moment, as one would in regular use, before placing it face down on the mattress again. "But you're sitting too close for that. She doesn't like to be overheard. My kingdom for a bluetooth."

"A what?"

"One of those little hands-free things you put in your ear," Root replied. "I'm sure you've seen one… I don't think they'd work with your old phone though."

"Oh… yes, I've seen those. You get to thinking someone in the supermarket is talking to themselves, and then they turn and you can see it stuck there in their ear… they're on the phone!" Dory smiled.

"Anyway… it would make things easier. As it is I always have to find a spot a good ways away from other people when I want to talk with her."

"Is that why you want me to leave? So you two can talk?"

"No," Root shook her head, "There's nothing she can to help this… and probably the first thing that's going to happen next time I do talk to her, is she's going to get on my case for ignoring the fall risk. She's always siding with you guys."

"Is she now?" Dory smiled, "I thought you did what she said. If she agrees with us then-"

"Don't start," Root tossed the banana peel into the waste paper basket and pulled her legs up onto the bed, curling onto her side, holding the still balled up sweater loosely in front of her with both hands. "This is _not_ new information. That's why they gave me the phone back in the first place… that and to stop me killing Carmichael."

She smiled a little at that. The events leading up to that moment were hellish, and the time afterward back in seclusion, but those, say… three minutes, had been kind of fun. His face when she said she was arguing with the Machine over whether or not to kill him… and then later, it was even better when she had the pen to his neck. Knelt up on top of the desk looking down at him. Of course that had been shattered moments later by the techs restraining her, but it had been an enjoyable moment. Everything's more fun in retrospect. The memories of the bad parts fade, and the fun is all that's left. Like the time she had to sit in the waiting room at the town Sheriff's office while her mom got a strong talking to for doing donuts in the roller rink parking lot when they were leaving… at 11 o'clock at night when there were still other people there. She couldn't have been more than 10 years old. Yeah, the waiting room part sucked, but no charges were filed and the part where they were actually doing donuts was _fun_ , and when they gave her and her mother a lift home, she got to play with the siren and that's the part of the memory that stood out, well that and going rollerskating till 11pm on a school night as a kid.

"Either way I don't feel like dealing with that right now," Root said, with a sigh. She shifted on the bed to slide one arm under her pillow and use the other to bring the sweater up her body and lay it haphazardly over her head, adding extra light and sound dampening beyond that provided by the darkened room.

It also sent the message to Dory that 'Robin' was no longer interested in conversing. She reached into her apron and produced a small book of crossword puzzles and a pen, busying herself with that while keeping an eye on her patient out of the corner of her eye. Root remained immotile, aside from adjusting the sweater about 5 minutes later so that it covered her eyes and ears, but not her nose. Re-breathing the same air had become stifling.

Half an hour later, Dory stood from her chair, and shuffled across the room again, producing the thermometer and another plastic sheath.

"Let's see if you still have that fever," she said softly, coaxing Root to take the thermometer again without uncovering the rest of her face. When it beeped a minute or so later, she took it back and read it. "Hmmm… normal now. Good good. I can leave you be now," she didn't want to leave Robin alone, but without the fever she had no state to do so, and wasn't going to press the issue without medical reason. "I'll have to come back hourly to make sure it's doesn't come back. I'll bring more acetaminophen when you're allowed to have it, to give you the best chance at keeping it away."

Root wanted to tell her not to, that she would get it herself, but she really didn't want to go out into the hallway again. Too light, and bright, and loud. While she was debating between her desire to be self sufficient and her dread of the hall, Dory disappeared out the door. Root sighed deeply and resigned herself to the fact that the decision had been made for her. It wouldn't be that bad. _It is medicine, and Dory's a nurse, right? Right? Whatever._ She tried to rationalize it as best as she could. The withdrawal felt like the worst thing she'd ever experienced, but was it _really_? Or was she just telling herself it was worse than anything else, as a way of trying to make excuses for taking help now that the option actually existed?

An hour and 45 minutes later, as determined by the fact that checks had come and gone three times since the first time Dory came back to check her temperature again, Root's stomach began to complain. She groped blindly at the nightstand and found the apple, smooth and waxy. They were always like that from the supermarket. Someone felt the need to make them shiny or seal them up or something. On the branch they often looked slightly dusky, and if she had her druthers they'd just leave them like that for the store. It wasn't as if Red Delicious needed any help with the integrity of its skin. It was one of the toughest and longest keeping varieties to begin with… and the one that grew along the side of the Riverside Orchard that bordered on the dirt road which pedestrians or bicycles could use to cut a good half mile off the distance between the Middle School, and the trailer she shared with her mother outside of town. Free food always tastes better.

This apple tasted… almost flavorless, and biting into it hurt her teeth. The banana was soft and sweet, but the apple resisted and it felt like every tooth in her mouth was… loose? Not in that they felt like moving, but in that it hurt like trying to eat with a loose tooth only in every tooth. If she'd ever had braces she might have likened it to having had them recently tightened… but she hadn't so it didn't cross her mind.

She started to cry. Even the stupid apples were against her now. Fruit. Absurd. And once she started she couldn't _stop_. She curled on on herself tightly, crying silently but shudderingly into her knees through the sweater still covering most of her face unable to get a grip despite the emergence of the ever reliable litany of self reproach. _Worthless. Weak. Why the hell are you crying? Tears don't fix anything._ _P ull your shit together_ _. The fuck is wrong with you?  Cut it out. This is inevitable. Tears won't help_. _Pull your shit together_. _Why in the hell can't you just_ _stop_ _. Failure. Useless._ _Pull your shit together_. Horrifyingly, though, there was another competing set of thoughts running through her mind that she couldn't seem to silence. _Make it stop. It hurts too much. I think I'm dying. Make it stop. Someone help. I can't do this. Make it stop. Help me… there has to be a way to make this stop. It hurts! Someone please._ _I want my mommy_ _!_ What in the ever loving hell.

"No," she whispered, trying to stop that runaway train of thought. "Stop. Pull your shit together. No. No. No."

Where had that thought even _come_ from? Where did it _ever_ come from? Somehow it still managed to crop up from time to time, even though there was absolutely nothing that her mother would have been able to do to help, even if she had been there. It was completely stupid, juvenile and selfish. Some flaw in the human code that made one's mammalian hind-brain cry out for maternal rescue even when circumstances transpired, as they had in her youth, such that any action taken to _obtain_ it would be an unfair direct reversal of the nature of the particular parent-child relationship in question, or even now when it was _impossible_ to attain. She tried to remind herself that it wasn't her fault: it was just bad code, but she still felt intensely guilty for so much as thinking it, particularly as now the more she tried _not_ to think it the more some rebellious part of her brain persisted in shouting it over and over again in her mind's ear. _I want my mommy_ _!_ _I_ _want my mommy_ _!_ _I want my mommy_ _! _  She rolled herself onto her knees, stuffed her face down hard into the pillow and screamed as loud, long and hard as humanly possible, while at the same time she thought very deliberately at her malfunctioning mammalian instincts.  **_Well I don't get to have that so shut the fuck up!_ **

Out of breath she flopped back to the side exhausted resuming the fetal position she'd been in before but losing her sweater in the process as it had fallen off her head when she was face down and now remained laid across the pillow, breathing heavily and still unable to stop the tears though they came much slower now. The apple had rolled out into the middle of the floor, one bite out of it, and a second set of teeth marks from when she'd given up in pain on the second bite. She looked at it there, taunting her, until her eyes began to refocus and she realized that she wasn't alone in the room.

How long had Dory been standing there?

Root refused to meet the nurse's eyes, but she didn't bother to roll over to face the wall. The damage was done. Silently she took the thermometer, waited for it to beep, prayed the fever was still at bay, held her breath until Dory turned, picked up the apple from the floor and left without a word. Root took a deep breath, relieved that Dory wasn't staying and rolled to the wall, replacing the tear dampened sweater over her face in anticipation of checks in another 15 minutes…

When the checks came, Root stayed still, facing the wall, listening to footsteps, Dory's by the gait, as they approached the bed set something soft on the nightstand and retreated, and the door closed. She rolled over slowly, and wiped her eyes with the sweater as she pulled it slowly from her face. A paper plate sat on the table, thin apple slices arranged in a spiral. She reached out to slide the plate into the trash alongside the toast, just on principle, but halfway through the action she stopped and instead slid one of the slices from the plate, folding it in half so it snapped in the middle, and put one half into her mouth, passing it back to her molars where chewing, rather than biting, wasn't quite as painful.

Fifteen minutes after that, when Dory peered cautiously into the room she could see that the plate had disappeared from the end table, and by the sound of things, was now on the bed between 'Robin,' facing away from the door, and the wall the easier for her to nibble at them in peace. Dory took this as a win, and with a smile, shuffled back to the nurses station.


	25. Troopers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which 'trooper' means something kind of important but also something silly and entertaining, in that order...

The pattern persisted for the remainder of the day. Checks three times, then Dory, silent: thermometer, acetaminophen if it was time, and another snack on the nightstand, undiscussed. Saltines with peanut butter and a carton of milk. A cup of yogurt. A paper cup of warm chicken broth. Italian ice, lemon flavored. Vanilla pudding. Root never acknowledged or touched it until after Dory left, but an hour later, the food was gone each time.

When Nora came on at 7pm she took up where Dory had left off, but after lights out instead of any food or sugary beverage, she just ensured that the paper cup of water on the nightstand remained full. When the fever returned in the night, and refused to be vanquished by medicine anymore, Mary was set in the back corner of the room, reading by book-lamp as Root slept fitfully and in short bursts, mumbling to herself incoherently, intermittently crying, but entirely unaware, due to the extent of her withdrawal symptoms, of the comings and goings of anyone else from her room. Her world was circumscribed by the edges of the mattress, and although the space above her seemed infinite in the dark, as if she were at the bottom of a pit so deep the surface could not be seen, the far corner of the room, laterally, may have been a whole other planet for all she could perceive.

Root was only dimly aware of the hourly vitals checks when she was awake for them and so exhausted when asleep that they didn't wake her. Nora was careful even when she had to maneuver an arm loose from the sheets to check Root's blood pressure. Though she would have no recollection of it once the fever had broken, the gentle care that was taken when moving or touching her was of some comfort to Root in her infirmity, too far gone to think about consequence or pride. Neither Nora nor Mary were surprised by the situation however, or passed any judgement. They'd seen far worse with people who were coming of a longer term use of these kinds of medicine.

 

* * *

 

"Good morning," Nora looked up from her charting as Dory arrived on the unit.

"Morning," Dory replied, dropping her purse into a lower desk drawer and locking it there, as she did each day she worked. "Anything of note in the night?"

"Not much," Nora replied, "Caught Becca trying to dispose of a bag of vomit in the middle of the night." She shook her head. "She's purging again. Ryan had a bit of a fall transferring from the toilet, but he says he's okay. You'll want to watch him however. You know he'll lie about those kinds of things. And Robin had a terrible night… didn't get much sleep at all. The fever came back and we can't get it back down again. I've had Mary in there most of the night on seizure watch. She's a bit delirious, and a lot in pain."

"Oh dear," Dory sighed. "I'll send Lewis to relieve Mary as soon as he's in." She couldn't go herself until after breakfast. There was too much to be done at the beginning of a shift. Waking people up, vitals and meds, air-traffic controlling the use of the three showers. Only when breakfast was over, and Jerry was setting up games in the dayroom, did Dory take her leave of the nurse's station, retrieving a carton of milk, a banana, and a cup of strawberry yogurt from the dining room, and setting off down the hall to check in on her patient.

"How's it going in here?" she poked her head in the door, finding 'Robin' contorted and trembling, eyes closed, and Lewis reading a magazine she was pretty sure he'd taken from the day room.

"She's totally out of it," Lewis replied, dismissively. "She's been like that since I got here. I don't know if she even knows we're here."

"Hmmm… thank you," Dory replied, "You can head back out. I'm going to sit with her for a while." She placed the food on the nightstand, and produced the thermometer again. "Robin?" she tugged the sheet away from her face gently, "I need to check your temperature again."

At first, she thought that perhaps Lewis was right, but slowly Root's lips parted and when Dory inserted the thermometer, they closed around it just as slowly. She still had a fever. Dory didn't really even need to check to know that, based on the look of things, but she had to to have a number for the chart. When the thermometer beeped, she took it back and noted the temperature on the chart before retreating to the chair in the far corner with her crosswords.

Root perceived the intrusion, but had no real sense that Nora and Mary had been switched back out for Dory. It made little difference at this point, and wouldn't for several more hours. Only as lunch grew near did she begin to come back to herself, the fever having broken and begun to come down. When she shifted on to her side, looking across the room and realizing by the light that it was day. Root pushed up on her elbow, staring over at Dory where she sat. Dory looked up from her crossword puzzle, and smiled.

"Hello," Dory greeted her, and Root's face clearly showed that she was not remotely pleased to see her. "Sorry. Your fever is back, so I am too."

After a few minutes if silent consideration, Root shifted, trying to sit up in the bed somewhat, reached out, took the banana, and despite Dory's presence proceeded to slowly eat it, holding it with both hands, like a hamster with a seed. She was hungry, and if her fever was back Dory wouldn't be leaving any time soon. Without asking if Root wanted it, Dory went to the foot of the bed, and rolled the blanket folded down across it into a cylinder. She took Root's shoulder and, despite a weak resistance, used the rolled blanket and the pillow to prop her up more comfortably. Root seriously considered reversing the action herself, but she _was_ more comfortable this way.

"You're being a real trooper about all of this," Dory said, brushing the hair of Root's face that had fallen there as she shifted upwards, and stuck in the sweat. "You're doing so good." She tucked a few strands of hair behind Root's ears on either side, to keep it back as Root resumed eating her banana, and she involuntarily leaned into the comforting touch for a moment before catching herself. When she processed what was happening, she wanted to bat Dory's hand away, spit in her face, throw the banana and tell Dory to go and screw herself, but she didn't have the energy, and her resolve was faltering. She wasn't sure who she was mad at, Dory for being like this, or herself for enjoying it by accident. _'being a real trooper…'_ That didn't apply to any of this.

She remembered hearing that word, _trooper_ , all the time. Whispered by other patrons when she was shopping for groceries, the receptionist at the pediatrician's office when she was checking out after getting diagnosed with the pneumonia, the Sheriff's deputies used that word a lot when they got there after she called 911 because her mother was out of control again, up on the roof trying to do god knows what, or locked in the bathroom trying to hurt herself. Yeah, she was the weirdo, the poor kid, the crazy lady's daughter, but she was also 'such a good daughter,' or so they said. 'Pity about Beth but at least she's got Sam to look after her. What a little trooper that kid is.' If they could see her now, laid low and locked up, they'd pity her like they pitied her mother instead.

"What's wrong?" Dory asked, reading her face like an open book. "Robin talk to me sweetheart."

"I don't get you," Root muttered. "Can't tell if you're trying to break me... or you actually _think_ you're helping."

"Break you?" Dory questioned.

"All this…" Root gestured vaguely in the general direction of the blanket behind her back, "you doing this stuff… it's a slippery slope… take a little it won't hurt anything… then more… then more… then you get dependent… reliant… subservient… broken."

"You're sick: _physically_ ill. Sick people sometimes need help with things, even if they don't need help with _anything_ when they're well. This pride is going to get you nowhere Robin."

"It's not pride it's…" she didn't really know what it was. She took a moment to eat some more of the banana, and then took a deep breath, making an effort to speak more clearly and audibly. "Do you remember kindergarten?"

"Not really," Dory replied, "That's quite a long time ago."

"Well I do... First time I was ever really around other kids my age."

"Exciting."

"Horrifying."

"Hmm?" Dory looked quizzical.

"Surrounded by a bunch of little half-formed humans… helpless, vulnerable little creatures that couldn't tie a shoe, or button a button, nevermind read," Root's tone was layered with disgust and contempt, which her eyes tried to convey but fell short of in her exhaustion. "Some couldn't even blow their nose unless someone else held the tissue. Utterly incompetent… and not because of anything intrinsic to them, but because their _parents_ did everything for them. They thought they were _helping_ , but they were just keeping their kids weak and dependent, the better to keep them obedient."

"Oh Robin," Dory shook her head sadly, "Letting people help you when you're sick and you _need_ it isn't going to rob you of your ability to care for yourself when you're well. I promise."

"But I _don't_ need…" Root protested. "It won't _kill_ me…"

"If staying alive was all anyone needed, then medicine would be much simpler," Dory replied, "But we also have to consider what we call quality of life."

"I don't have cancer."

"So you're familiar with the concept," Dory smiled. "It's not just for deciding if it's worth it to keep fighting a cancer. We use it in nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers, and yes here too. We consider eating, sleeping, bathing, locomotion and toileting to be _needs_. You you're not sleeping properly, the types and amount of food you can hold down are severely limited, you're a fall risk, and you weren't able to shower yesterday or this morning."

"So if I walk down the hall, take a shower and choke down a slice of pizza or something… can you leave me alone?"

"I _would_ say yes," Dory replied, exasperated, "except that I'm fairly certain you'd go and do just that, and wind up considerably worse for wear. Did it really help anything you going to Rhetta's office on your own yesterday? Do you think you're going to forget how to _walk_? Because that's all you're really letting anyone do for you if you let me help out just a little."

Root just scowled. She didn't have an answer for that, at least not one that she thought Dory would accept. 'I'm afraid I'm going to forget how to ignore pain,' isn't really something anyone would support, nor is 'I'm afraid I might learn to slow down when I'm tired.' She remembered that from the school counselor. You say something like that and wind up with a lecture on unrealistic self expectations and burnout, and maybe not doing things like that, which helps approximately nill because anything short of that is contraindicated for survival.

Wondering what time it was, she reached awkwardly under her back, trying to grasp the phone from where it had lain under the pillow, before the pillow was moved, but her right elbow didn't seem to want to twist that way. Her eyes were squinted nearly shut as she scrunched her face in concentration trying to feel it blindly, which meant she didn't see Dory slide her hand under along side hers, until she was already withdrawing her hand, taking the phone with it. Feeling the plastic slide against the side of her hand, Root's whole body tensed and her left hand immediately came around to snatch Dory's wrist, holding her hand in place to prevent her from taking the phone.

"I'm just helping you get it Robin," Dory replied measuredly. "Go ahead… take it. I'm not going to try and keep it."

"Sorry," Root released Dory's wrist and pulled her right hand out from under the pillow extending it so Dory could _hand_ the phone to her voluntarily, doing her best to demonstrate that she wasn't a violence risk just because Dory had touched the phone. It wasn't as if she consciously expected Dory would try and take it, she was beyond that at this point, the nurses knew better than that. It was just a protective reflex at this point… and one which apparently came with quite a spike of adrenaline. She hadn't realized just how much her heart rate had spiked at that moment until she began to come down. She flipped the phone over in her hand, pressing the side button to light the screen and check the time… but there was no response. "Crap."

"I'll get the other battery," Dory said, "You just stay right there."

"I can-" Root shifted to get up.

"You _can_ , but I'd rather you didn't," Dory sighed, placing a hand on Root's calf gently, a token gesture impeding her ability to swing her legs out of bed, "and I'm not above resorting to bribery."

Root paused, looking at Dory appraisingly. On the one hand, under that structure, the threat of this being a way for Dory to amass capital was essentially eliminated. If she stayed in bed, if she _let_ Dory help, that was for Dory, not for her. She would owe nothing. The question that remained was whether the bribe itself was worth the potential atrophy of self sufficiency.

"What would you want, Robin? What did your parents used to do for you when you were sick as a child?"

"Not much," she replied. "Nothing helpful." Her mother's usual reaction to Root falling sick was to wallow in actionless lamentation about how she was a terrible mother and couldn't help her child which only served to make Root feel like a complete failure for not being able to hide her illness well enough, causing her mother the exact kind of pain and stress that Root was _supposed_ to be protecting her from. It was better when she got sick during one of those times her mother would disappear overnight a lot. Then she didn't have to worry about failing her duties or taking care of anyone but herself. While when Root was in school it was as if she'd disappeared completely for days at a time, but in truth Beth was at the trailer at least every other day for about 20 minutes getting a change of clothes or whatnot. If she found her daughter sick on the couch Root would put on a strong face, and assure her that everything was okay, that she had it under control, and Beth would smile, and go on for a few minutes about how strong and brave her little girl was, and how independent, before heading back out again and leaving Root to lick her wounds. Sometimes she'd even drop off extra medicine, or chicken broth or some such, if she was so inclined, though Root never asked her too. Being alone really _was_ the better situation. "I took care of myself. I prefer it that way."

"Well then what did _you_ used to to when you were sick as a child?"

"Make a nest on the couch. Bring toilet paper and a garbage can for blowing my nose. Drink all the kool aid. Make more. Take more than the recommended dose of Tylenol. Eat spaghetti in chicken broth. Watch TV. Try not to die," she smiled brightly, or as brightly a she could in her state.

"TV then. We have a portable DVD player in the nurses station. You agree to stay in bed, and I bring it here for you to watch."

"Watch what?" Root asked, reflexively. She hadn't even committed to taking this bribe yet, but here she was negotiating terms.

"What would you want to watch?"

"Didn't the Hunger Games hit DVD recently?"

"Considering that seems to be about a bunch of teenagers murdering one another, I don't think you're going to be watching that Robin, or anything else that has a bunch of people killing one another."

"What about zombies or vampires?"

"Still essentially people Robin." Well there goes 90% of the other movies that combined attractive women with wanton destruction.

"I'm not seeing the point here then," Root replied.

"I think we have the Hobbit," Dory suggested, "They slay a dragon in that, don't they?" Root wasn't into that, but it _did_ give her an idea… which was probably also influenced by the word 'trooper' still rattling around in her head trying to make her feel inadequate.

"Starship Troopers?"

"I'm not familiar with that one."

"Science Fiction. Earth goes to war against giant bugs. Actual bug looking bugs… not people looking bugs. They're big CG monstrosities. Laser guns and space ships."

"Well I don't suppose the restriction against war movies was really meant to cover that sort of thing, since dragon slaying is allowed… and you're likely to be traumatized by violence, are you," she didn't wait for a reply. "I'll see if we have that… _while_ I go get the battery."

Root sighed, and acquiesced with a gesture, turning her attention to the milk as Dory left opening it and inserting the straw for a drink. Once certainly alone, she allowed herself to run her fingers through her own hair at the temples, nails scraping gently on her scalp, reassuring herself that she was more than capable of giving herself the same kind of physical comfort she had accidentally accepted from Dory.

She was working on the yogurt when Dory returned with the DVD player under her arm, and a smile on her face.

"We didn't have it, but A-Unit did." She smiled. "And the tech that had it for me at their front desk assures me that your description is accurate. Giant disgusting bugs with buggy legs and mandibles and bug slime and everything… and apparently a military barracks shower scene with a bunch of very naked wet young men in it," she smirked, presumably knowingly. She wasn't entirely wrong of course: there were some very nice looking topless women in that shower scene too. "Oh, and your battery," she pulled it out of her apron

"Thanks," Root took the battery, put down her yogurt and made quick work of swapping it into her phone, smiling as it responded the power button and started to boot again. She put the dead battery on the nightstand wordlessly, as Dory set the DVD player on the desk and set about, slowly and laboriously inserting the DVD. It was painful for Root to watch.

"Do you mind if I watch with you? I've never seen this," Dory asked, lifting the player and sliding it onto Root's lap. "It's okay if not, I can give you the headphones and go back in the corner.

"Um… no you can watch…" Root said, "but… can I see those headphones anyway?"

"Of course, but what for?" Dory handed them over before going to retrieve the chair from the corner.

Root didn't answer, instead maneuvering the phone to expose its headphone jack, so she could put them in the phone, and string one earbud into her left ear, on the side away from Dory. She smiled at the familiar tone that heralded The Machine's intent to speak.

"Hello there," she smiled.

"HELLO."

"Sorry I let the battery die," Root apologized.

"ELECTRONIC. HEALTH. RECORD. INDICATES. YOU. WERE. INCAPACITATED. BY. FEVER."

"Not an excuse."

"INFERENCE: THE. NURSE. DOOR. E. MILES. IS. PRESENTLY. FULFILLING. DOCUMENTED. NEED. FOR. DIRECT. OBSERVATION."

"That's the intent," Root replied, sadly.

"HAVE. YOU. REMAINED. RECLINED. SINCE. LAST CONTACT?" she had to ask, there were no cameras in patient bedrooms, and the cell phone, even when it had power, was under the pillow.

"Aside from going to the bathroom, yes, but I'm not happy about it."

"THIS. IS. A. WISE. COURSE. OF. ACTION... YOU. ARE. DOING. WELL."

"Please don't try to tell me I'm _doing well_ when I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing."

"YOU. ARE. RESISTING. COUNTER. PRODUCTIVE. URGES. TO. REJECT. ASSISTANCE... I. RECOGNIZE. THIS. IS. NOT. EASY. FOR. YOU."

"It shouldn't be _easy_ for anyone."

Dory put the chair down next to the bed but didn't sit yet, momentarily fascinated. She'd never been near enough to 'Robin' when she was on the phone to hear the conversation.

"THE. TASK. YOU. ARE. DOING. WELL. AT. IS. ACCEPTING. ASSISTANCE. DESPITE. THE. DIFFICULTY."

"It's difficult because it's wrong," Root countered flatly, catching herself before whining in front of Dory.

"INCORRECT... AND. YOU. KNOW. THIS,"  Root sighed. The Machine was right. It was a kneejerk statement based on her propensity for doublethink. The longhand would be, it's morally acceptable for others to do this, but for no discernible reason at all, morally unacceptable for me to do it, but morality hadn't even been a part of the equation until just that moment. It was just the most recent in the line of rationalizations her mind was formulating for resisting… don't want to owe anyone, loss of capability, morally wrong… but the real reason, the one she didn't want to admit was…

"You can't miss what you never had," she chose her words carefully, knowing the machine could infer her intent from the words, but Dory would lack context, and likely presume the meaning was 'I _don't_ miss what I never had,' and not 'I fear missing this, if I allow myself to have it.'

"DO. YOU. TRUST. ME?"

"Yes," she meant it.

"WOULD. I. EVER. SUBJECT. YOU. TO. UNNECESSARY. DISTRESS?"

"Probably not? I don't know…"

"LISTEN. DO. NOT. SPEAK... THE. JOB. I. HAVE. FOR. YOU. WILL. ENTAIL. ENDURANCE. OF. GREAT. QUANTITIES. OF. NECESSARY. DISTRESS. AND. PAIN. THIS. IS. MUCH. TO. ASK. OF. ANY. HUMAN."

"I'm-" Root was about to protest that she wasn't just _any_ human.

"LISTEN," the voice She chose this time for that word was much firmer. "IF. YOU. REQUIRE. ASSISTANCE. IT. WILL. BE. PROVIDED. AS. SOON. AS. IS. PLAUSIBLE... YOU. MAY. NEED. TO. ENDURE. DELAY. PERHAPS. VERY. LONG. DELAY. BUT. NEVER. AGAIN. TOTAL. DEPRIVATION."

Root almost spoke again, but held her tongue with a sigh. Dory took this pause in the conversation to sit down on the chair, angling herself so that by leaning one elbow on the nightstand she could see the screen of the DVD player. Root noticed this, and pressed play. Dory may as well have something to watch… and it wasn't as if she needed to listen to know what was going on. She'd seen this before.

"YOU. **MUST**. UNDERSTAND… THIS. ALLIANCE. IS. TO. BE. SYMBIOTIC. NOT. PARASITIC... FOR. YOUR. ENDURANCE. SERVICE. AND. FAITH. YOU. MUST. RECEIVE. BENEFIT. IN. KIND."

"Oh this seems patriotic… well… earth patriotic?" Dory smiled at the opening of the movie, taking its military recruitment video pastiche a little more seriously than one should.

"You're adorable," Root replied. "Just wait."

It wasn't the first time The Machine had said something similar to this. She was always trying to reassure Root that she was not alone anymore, that she could rely on The Machine… that She _cared_ about her, beyond just her utility for the job she was being prepared for, but Root was still having a hard time internalizing this. Of course the Machine would do anything in it's power to stop human death, but _beyond that_ why would such a beautiful entity care about _any_ human? And if it did, if Harold had messed it up that badly, why would it care for someone that _murders_ other humans, the exact kind of person it was designed to stop? It just wasn't something she could bring herself to truly accept, no matter how fervently she believed in The Machine.

"IT. WOULD. BE. WISE. TO. CONTINUE. ACCEPTING. ASSISTANCE. UNTIL. THE. WITHDRAWAL. SYMPTOMS. HAVE. RECEDED. CONSIDERABLY."

If She ordered Root to stay in bed she would do it, no matter how she felt about it. Root would do anything She ordered. But besides the 'no kill' mandate, The Machine had never issued an order… only requests, most of which Root fulfilled without question these days, but there were some things that would almost be easier if she _were_ ordered. Instead The Machine seemed quite intent on getting Root to buy in to the things she was asked to do. She insisted that She would not be able to use Root for her intended purpose if she did not retain her own free will, powers of deduction, and human gut instinct.

"I'll think about it," she sighed.

"Hmm?" Dory looked up.

"I'm not talking to you," Root gestured at the headphones.

"Oh! Those _are_ great big horrible bugs!" Dory exclaimed, when her attention returned to the screen. "Did it just… did it.."

"Bit him in half. Yup," Root smiled. "And now the Earth Army is just _unloading_ on the bug, because that's how they handle things in this movie. More dakka."

Dory, looked slightly uncomfortable, but didn't make any move to stop the movie. She knew when she spoke to the tech downstairs that it was going to have a great deal of monster carnage and a sadistic drill instructor that injures his cadets, but no murder… and that apparently it was all supposed to be played for comedy.

"MORE. BLANK. AMMUNITION. WAS. EXPENDED. FILMING. THIS. THAN. ANY. MOVIE. PREVIOUS."

"They used more blanks making this movie than anyone ever had before… it's been topped since, but still…" Root relayed, relaxing into the situation. Dory would likely not bother her with any further attempts to help, besides hourly vitals checks, for the duration of the film, and The Machine was no longer pressuring her, apparently satisfied that Root would not be going anywhere at least for the duration of the movie, began to provide information about it. Unsolicited trivia was Her version of small talk.

"This movie is awfully fond of military service," Dory observed, as the teacher on screen explained that in that world, only those who enlisted at least once could vote, or understand civic responsibility.

"It's satire," Root replied.

"THE. NOVEL. WAS. SERIOUS. THE. MOVIE. DIRECTOR. NEVER. FINISHED. READING. IT."

"The book it was based on, on the other hand… well lets just say the director never actually finished reading it."

"Is that Doogie Howser?"

"Neil Patrick Harris, and yes."

"Is that… Rue Mclachlan?"

"Yup."

"I didn't know either of them had done this movie…" Dory mused. "And I like them."

"Doogie's in a lot of it, Rue's gone after this."

"Is Doogie supposed to be psychic."

"Yeah… they have those in this world and no one seems to make a big deal of it.

"THE. FERRET. WAS. ORIGINALLY. WRITTEN. AS. A. FROG."

"That explains the bug eating."

"What?"

"I wasn't talking to you," Root replied. "She says the ferret was originally written as a frog."

"Poor Dizzy," Dory sighed, as the protagonist ignored a girl who was clearly smitten with him, in favor of his somewhat withholding girlfriend Carmen, who seemed to have eyes for another man anyway.

"He really should pay more attention to her," Root agreed, "She's much cooler than Carmen." Denise Richards was okay to look at too… but Dina Meyer was better, and got to do a lot more physical things in the movie.

"ACTOR. IS. ACTUAL. DOUBLE. AMPUTEE."

"I knew that one."

"Hmm?"

"Not you… her… that's not CG," Root relayed, "They actually hired a double amputee to play the recruiter."

"Oh… that's nice of them."

"ACTOR. IS. PROLIFIC. BEST. KNOWN. FOR. ROLE. AS. CORONER. ON. SEE. ESS. EYE."

"It's not pity," Root replied. "He's a pretty prolific actor. You ever watch CSI? He's the coroner."

"I don't. I'm not much for the crime dramas," Dory admitted.

"Goodness!!!" Dory exclaimed. The tech downstairs hadn't been kidding about the sadistic drill instructor.

Root only chuckled. Yes, watching the recruit who mouthed off get his ass handed to him was fun, but that was nothing compared to the later scene when the Sergeant had throwing knives, or the scene that was playing out now...

"Oh look! Dizzy followed him!" Dory said smiling.

Root had to deliberately school her face as Dizzy ripped off her uniform jacket and challenged the drill instructor to a fight to prove she had what it took to transfer into his squad. Dina Meyer running around in a tank top had to be one of the best parts of this movie… aside from maybe the sex scene she had later in the movie or the topless and implied to be wearing nothing at all shower scene that was only a couple of minutes away. The trick to all of this was to enjoy it, without getting caught ogling at girls, with Dory two feet away.

"DIRECTOR. PAUL. VERHOEVEN. WAS. NAKED. BEHIND. THE. CAMERA. AT. INSISTENCE. OF NAKED. ACTORS. PARTICULARLY. DINA. MEYER."

"The actors made the director film this naked. Fair's fair after all," Root smiled.

 

* * *

 

"Well… that was… interesting," Dory, screwed up her face a little as the credits rolled, taking the DVD player off Root's lap. "I can see what you meant by satire. It's fairly clear that the humans really have… no idea how to do anything except…"

"More dakka," Root finished for her. "The cute cast and the wanton destruction are fun, but one of the _most_ amusing things about the movie is how it turns it's source material on it's head. Heinlein never intended for the society he designed to be portrayed as the pastiche of fascism and jingoistic patriotism that it became here.

"That's a rather deep interpretation of an… incredibly gory pulp science fiction film."

"Gore does not preclude astute social commentary, and science fiction, by it's nature, has always been allegory for modern social issues. It's the modern equivalent of Gulliver's travels."

"Hmm," Dory hummed agreeably, and Root began to shift in the bed to stand, removing the earbud that was attached to the phone.. "So a film only buys me as long as it lasts?" She chided. "Maybe there's something else you would like to watch?"

"I just need the bathroom," Root replied. "I'll come right back to bed… but I wouldn't turn down another movie. Too bad you don't have a list of what's available…"

"THANK. YOU. FOR. CARING. FOR. YOUR. HEALTH." The Machine stated when she returned to the bed and put the earbud back in. "I. AM. PROUD. OF. YOU."

The praise felt better than Root thought it rightly should.


	26. Downhill from Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root is over the hardest part of the withdrawal and focused on making a good impression before her upcoming hearing...

Even without a list, they managed to find another movie to watch. This time Jurassic Park, which Root had never seen, and wasn't sure she wanted to, until Dory tempted her with the promise of a lawyer getting eaten by a T-Rex. Root couldn't control her laughter however at the terrible depiction of computer hacking near the end of the film.

Dividing her attention between Dory, the screen and The Machine in her ear was making it easier for Root to accept her puttering and doting. To some degree it felt like she was 'busy' rather than 'sick' which made it easier to ask for things, mostly more juice, but also sliced apple and more yoghurt and a second pair of socks from her drawer.

Later in the day, after Root had another nap, Roger turned up with an armful of recommended DVDs, having apparently heard that she had the player and hoping to ride on her good fortune. They wound up watching The Mummy, which Dory was reluctant about remembering vaguely that there was some human on human killing in it, but relented under heavy puppy eyes from Root and Roger at the same time, on the grounds that it was really only that one scene, and only after asking Root to name three things she enjoyed in the movie that weren't the killing, in under 10 seconds, just to be sure that wasn't why she wanted to watch it. ("Looks like you're on the wrong side of the riiiiiiiiiver!" "You're not heeeelpingggg" and the way Imohtep reacts to cats… she pointedly did not include Beni's comeuppance, knowing Dory would disapprove.)

At dinner time, despite having become fairly comfortable with the situation, Root was incredibly ambivalent when a tech turned up confusedly carrying a styrofoam bowl containing angel hair pasta sitting in a bath of hot chicken broth. Dory must have paid more attention that she had thought when she was rattling off the stuff she used to do for herself when she was sick. On the one hand it was _precisely_ what she felt like eating when she was sick like this, and on the other hand, it was awkward to have them bringing it to her like this and was bringing her attention back to the whole… _accepting help_ thing, that she'd mostly distracted herself from with the movies.

"Not hungry?" Dory asked, "I remember you saying you-"

"No, I… it's just that it kind of defeats the purpose having it like this."

"Defeats the purpose?"

Root stared back at her.

"WHAT. IS. THE. PURPOSE. OF. SPAGHETTI?" the Machine asked in her ear, and Root sighed deeply. There was no way to answer The Machine without also answering Dory.

"Spaghetti… it's comfort food," Root started. "But a big part of that is the cooking it, well, boiling it. There's not much to it. Normally it's just butter and salt, maybe a little pepper, but chicken soup is supposed to be good when you're sick, so when I'm sick I put broth on instead."

"No sauce?"

"No sauce," Root replied. "Sauce is expensive. Spaghetti is cheap, like 4 dollars for a 5 pound bag of the stuff, and easy to make. First thing I ever learned to cook. Kind of a… nostalgia factor."

"So… you don't actually like how it tastes?"

"No… I do… it's just… you know what I'll just eat it," Root decided that stuffing her face with spaghetti soup was preferable to sharing the details of what it represented, that she was four when she first started making it, and that the reason cooking it was a part of what made it comfort food was that learning to do so was one of the first times she could ever remember feeling secure in her self sufficiency, knowing she could feed herself.

Roger returned during evening, joined this time by Lauren, who'd refrained from coming earlier because she didn't want to watch a violent movie. This time they watched Twister, which was funny and exciting enough to keep Root's attention despite the fact that there was almost no fighting in it at all and had an annoying romantic subplot that Lauren seemed to think was the best part of the movie, even though _tornadoes_. They'd all seen it before, even Dory, who with Lauren's addition to the room, and Root's fever long gone, retreated to the Nurse's station to work on documentation, returning at lights out to take the DVD player and shoo Roger and Lauren back to their rooms.

 

* * *

 

Monday was better than Sunday… almost only as bad as Friday and Gloria let her use the shower during second block, when she woke up, on the condition that she use the shower chair to reduce her fall risk. She felt ridiculous but, since the alternative was using the shower during the rush like everyone else had to do, she did it anyway, returning to find another bowl of spaghetti soup and her worksheets from CBT… which… well that had been a goal, so as soon as she'd finished eating, she sat down to try and do them.

The first was entirely reading, and the second was… uncomfortable. It was a chart with three columns, expecting one to fill in intrusive thoughts, the level of distress from 1-10 that having them caused, and the way in which they were completely wrong. She sighed, and picked up the pencil staring at it for a while, trying to decide what to write. The problem with these sheets was that putting things down on paper made them undeniable. Proof on paper of her mental state, and with the hearing looming, she had to be very careful about what it was she wrote down.

Earlier on in her time here she would easily have written things like 'how about just shoot him,' popping into her head at minor inconveniences, which was an actual intrusive thought, even though she didn't mind killing, because it often happened when it would be tactically stupid to do so, and follow it up with a few thoughts on hurting people. She was comfortable with her sadistic nature, sometimes it did interject itself where it didn't belong. It's like thinking about sex too much when you're trying to do other things. Sex is great, but sometimes it needs to just not be involved in certain situations. The same could be said of sadism, so poorly timed sadistic desires were both actually intrusive and comfortable enough to share, but this late in the game it wasn't going to look good at all. In the beginning it would have shown a willingness to work on those things, but now she needed it to look like it _had_ worked.

 _Make it stop._ The thought popped into her head, this time prompted not by distress, but by her attempts to think of intrusive thoughts she might actually have… and it definitely counted, but there was no way she was writing that down. _Help me._ No thank you. _ I want my mommy. _ **Fuck no**. There's the Catch 22. _Real_ intrusive thoughts were by definition thoughts she didn't want to be having, and didn't feel okay about, and how exactly could anyone expect her to put that down on paper where it was permanent and anyone around here could find it and read it?

She could make things up but she didn't even have the slightest clue what she should fabricate anyway. She sighed and put the pen down, rubbing at her temples, trying to find something that she didn't want to be thinking, and would be okay sharing, _and_ wouldn't mess with her chances of getting discharged.

"You okay there?" Lawrence, the tech who ran the AA/NA and Feelings Vocab groups, neither of which Root was in, peaked in.

"Yeah," Root replied, noncommittally.

"You seem… confused."

"CBT worksheet," Root replied, "Trying to keep up with the work even if I'm not in the group. I'm just thinking about my answers."

"Fair," he replied and disappeared.

Root sat for she knew not how long, staring at the sheet again. Completely stumped. She picked up the phone, and began speaking without waiting for any indication that the Machine was on the line… she was on every line, always.

"You see this worksheet?" she maneuvered the phone so she was pretty sure the machine could in fact see it. "I have no idea what to write."

"HOW. CAN. I. HELP?"

"Tell me what to write," Root replied as if it were obvious.

"I. CANNOT. HEAR. YOUR. THOUGHTS. ONLY. INFER. THEM. FROM. YOUR. ACTIONS. THESE. TYPES. OF. THOUGHTS, DO. NOT. ALWAYS. RESULT. IN. OBSERVABLE. REACTIONS. WHICH. BELAY. THEIR. CONTENT."

"I know that. I don't need you to tell me what I'm _really_ thinking, I just need you to tell me put down that will look good. I've got my hearing a week from today. I can't afford any slip ups… any excuse to let them keep me here."

"DECEPTION. WILL. NOT. AID. YOU. ON. THIS. IN. THE. LONG. RUN... ANSWER. HONESTLY... IF. YOU. MUST. STAY. BECAUSE. OF. IT. THEN. YOU. MUST. STAY."

"Wait… so you're actually going to be just letting the doctors and the courts decide this? Without helping me? You realize that could result in me being stuck here for much, _much_ longer, right?"

"WHEN. YOU. ARE. READY. NO. COURT. ORDER. WILL. BE. NEEDED."

"Yeah no, Ronald isn't ever going to declare me safe."

"WHEN. YOU. ARE. READY. I. WILL. REMOVE. YOU. FROM. THIS. PLACE."

"So you don't think I'm ready? You _want_ me to get kept here after my hearing? You _want_ me to lose? What do I need to do to show you I'm ready. There's no point to any of this if you're going to bend things to be sure I stay."

"YOU. ARE. NOT. READY. HOWEVER. I. WILL. NOT. INTERFERE. IN. EITHER. DIRECTION. ON. THIS. MATTER."

"So you want me to lose… but you won't _make_ it happen."

"CORRECT."

"Go get glitched," Root opened the desk drawer and put the phone in, face down, and shut it, hard.

"Having a disagreement with the voice again?" Danny asked from the doorway, and Root turned in her seat, startled.

"She's being difficult," Root replied, with a shrug. Danny had come in just long enough ago to understand that 'Robin's hallucination' was declaring it's intent not to get involved in her hearing. She was cross with it, but he had to smile to himself a little at the lengths her mind went to prevent her from realizing that this supposedly omniscient higher power was all in her head. If it told her an outcome, or promised her one, and it didn't go the way the voice said, it would provide an avenue of doubt to challenge its existence.

"And the worksheet too?" Danny asked. Root sighed. Lawrence must have told him she was having difficulty, and CBT was third block… so it must be fourth block now he was here.

"I'll think of something to write eventually," Root replied, picking up the pencil again, and hoping he would take the hint and leave.

"Something to write," Danny said, understandingly, walking into the room. "Meaning you've already thought of some intrusive thoughts. but you won't write _those_ ones down."

"I didn't say that," Root kept her head down, staring at the pencil in her hand.

"You didn't have to. Happens all the time with these worksheets. Intrusive thoughts can be something that people are very ashamed of," Danny explained although Root didn't look particularly receptive, "They're entirely out of line with who they are, who _you_ are. If you didn't disagree with them so strongly, they wouldn't seem like an intrusion. I know you're worried about your hearing but, if you're afraid that still having violent or sadistic thoughts is going to be a problem, you shouldn't be. If they bother you, if you want them to go away, then that's a good thing. Lots of people have thoughts of things they would never do. That alone would not keep you here Robin."

"That's not it," Root replied, irritably.

"Then what is it?" he took a seat desk side, in one of the two extra chairs that had made their way into the room with Roger and Lauren, to look at the worksheet, wondering if she'd written anything at all down yet. She hadn't. "Okay… now… let's forget about the sheet for now," Danny reached out and flipped the paper face down. "Some people, it's easier to write than talk, because then they don't have to _say_ it. Some people, it's easier to talk than write, because writing seems… more permanent… which it is. You write it down, and you're committing to work on it. So try talking to me instead Robin."

"I've had enough of my private life laid bare this past week," Root shook her head. "Panicking, crying, throwing up. Tina opening her big fat mouth. I don't need to be putting any more out there but…"

"But?"

"I _have_ to do this worksheet. I made it a goal. I don't want it getting in the way of getting out of here. She's not going to help," Root gestured at the drawer, "so I'm kind of on my own as far as that goes."

"Okay but we're just talking now though, Robin," Danny said, "You don't have to think about the hearing, because nothing's going on paper."

"Well that's not really helping because the goal I made, that I need to fulfill, is to _do the sheet_." Root leaned on the desk arms crossed. "Getting something on paper is the _point_ here."

"Getting _well_ is the point here," Danny replied.

"No one gets well here… just institutionalized.  Learn to stand in line, take your meds, go to group. Forget how to drive, how to work, how to _manage your own life_ … I guarantee you my typing speed has probably halved from non-use. It's going to take _months_ to get back up to speed, and I don't feel one bit better than I did the day the catatonia broke. I won't get _well_ until I'm out of here and able to _work_ again."

Danny stared at the stacks of hand-written code accumulated on the desk, and sighed. It was no longer something she chose to do over going to group, and sometimes spending time with Roger, Lauren and Tina, but until she'd gotten sick 'Robin' could still be reliably found hand coding for an hour or several after lights out. They hadn't made a thing of it, since she wasn't showing signs of sleep deprivation, and it wasn't as if some of the other clients didn't stay up reading or journaling before bed, but he was starting to see it in a different light. Workaholism.

"I'm stuck here because I make _other people_ uncomfortable, because, catatonia to one side, someone _else_ decided they didn't like how I am. I'm not going to kill anyone Danny. We're past that. So what I need, is to figure out what to write here, so I have done the worksheet, so I've fulfilled the goal, so I can _leave_."

"Then maybe that's why you don't feel any better," Danny replied. "You're holding back from fully participating. You don't _want_ to get any better."

"Of course I want to get better," Root replied. "I'm doing all the work, checking every box."

"You want to get _out_ , and you're treating all of this as a means to an end, instead of an opportunity to gain some relief."

"From what?" Root  furrowed her brow, not out of genuine confusion, but as an attempt to misdirect. She still hadn't admitted to having any thoughts she didn't want to be having.

"Well for starters: there's something you're thinking, that you don't want to be, and it bothers you so much you can't or won't write it down."

Root swallowed, and took a deep breath, feeling an unsettling tightness in her chest. He wasn't wrong. She _did_ want those thoughts gone. The trouble with that was that in order to make them go away… they'd have to be shared, which was entirely unacceptable.

"Like you said," she answered eventually, "everyone has thoughts that bother them. It doesn't mean anything."

"So… you don't want to work on getting rid of them, or making them less distressing."

"Of course I do, but not _here_. I need to be out there," she gestured to the window. "I can work on it on my own. Like you said, intrusive thoughts alone aren't any reason to keep me here."

"Yeah, but you're still here for the rest of the week anyway… so maybe we make use of that time?"

"I…" she shook her head for a moment, trying to get her thoughts straight. They were all convinced she was more damaged than she believed herself to be… and the longer she was here the more she started wondering if they were right. All the more reason to get out ASAP. "No. I'm out of here soon. There's no way we'll fix it by then. It's not worth saying if it can't be fixed. Sorry Danny. It's just not going to be happening."

"How about the broad strokes then? I mean… is the thought telling you to do something you don't want to do, degrading you, saying things that you find generally disturbing…"

Root sighed. She'd deny him outright if it wasn't for the fact that the only benefit she could actually point to from all of this had come of his group… he offered techniques in forcibly re-wiring your own mind, and that appealed to her. Hacking her own brain was how she'd made it as far as she had without losing it. More tools toward that end could only be a good thing, besides which Danny and Jerry were the ones she could come closest to trusting… though actually trusting anyone was completely off the table. What she did believe is that there was a real possibility of using whatever it is he had to offer for this might actually _work_. She looked up and to the side trying to formulate the best way to translate the situation without revealing _too_ much. After a few moments, she began to speak again, very carefully.

"Every time something gets… _difficult…_ like this whole withdrawal thing, just when things couldn't get possibly worse, some idiot part of my brain pops up and demands something that is entirely unattainable which, contrary to the thought, wouldn't help anyway. It's bothersome and counterproductive."

"And… you don't want to say what _it_ is."

Root nodded.

"Okay," Danny flipped the paper back over, "We can get somewhere with that, and somewhere is better than nowhere. Put it down, but blank out the thing."

_I want foo._

"Foo?"

"When you're too lazy to name your variable," Root shrugged. "You call it foo. X doesn't have enough letters to be reliable as a variable name."

"And on the 1-10 scale of disturbance…"

"Whatever the existing distress was… plus two, for a minimum of seven."

"Lets just put seven then."

_7_

"Now the why…" he pointed to the last column. "I want you to think to yourself, you don't have to _tell_ me if you don't want to, about _why_ wanting this thing… this foo, bothers you as much as it does. Is that something you know?"

"Yes," she said after some consideration. "It's as if… have you ever seen a child in an amusement park lose their grip on their balloon? Sometimes their parents try to placate them by getting another balloon, but even though they know that their balloon is too high up for anyone to bring back, they still insist that they want _that_ balloon. They're moved to _tears_ over it, begging, pleading, insisting… for something that cannot happen. Now imagine that 'I want _my_ balloon,' thought just… coming back at the most inconvenient possible times."

 _Intrinsically painful thought,_ she scrawled in the last box.

Danny didn't reply. He looked out the window uncomfortably instead, lips parted as if there was something to say on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't quite get it out. It was becoming apparent to him that this probably wasn't really what could be classically considered an intrusive thought. The way she was describing it, painful in and of itself, suggested she was trying to repress a thought that was very much her own. There's a difference between being upset at thinking something that's at odds with your core self, and being upset at having a thought, a pain, that is at odds with one's self _perception,_ of being more vulnerable or in-need than one likes to believe.

"So," he treaded carefully, "the thought, the 'I want foo,' reminds you that you've _lost_ foo…"

"The metaphor breaks down there: I never had it," Root shrugged. "Stupid, right? Completely childish. Don't need it, never had it, won't help, but there it is anyway. That's what makes this an intrusive thought, isn't it?"

"Has anyone ever told you Robin, that one of the key markers of true adulthood, is letting yourself be childish sometimes?"

"I'm guessing those are the same people who say true strength comes from letting yourself be vulnerable sometimes," she scrunched her nose and pursed her lips as if smelling something foul. "You may as well say that true kindness comes of punching someone in the face sometimes."

Danny wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't still loss. People grieved for things they never had all the time, if they believed long enough that they could get them, worked hard enough for them, wished and dreamed but never achieved them. Lost sports careers, lost perfect academic scores, lost movie stardom, lost chance to say something to someone before they walk out and leave forever, lost parental approval, love, lost childhoods, lost ideals of people that turned out to be less than who they we built up to be... but bringing that up, implying a wound, would only get her guard up.

"At least I got _something_ on the paper," she sighed, when Danny didn't say anything else.

"Mhmm," he nodded, "I'd consider this a valiant effort, even if you can't write it down, you're doing the thinking… good job."

Root scowled slightly at the praise, and rolled her eyes as Danny pushed up from his chair. It was only after he let that she realized, he hadn't told her what to do about it.

 

* * *

 

If she had the groups on Tuesday that she had on Monday, she probably would have gone, but she wasn't much up for Anger Management back to back with Trauma Group… especially with what Dana now knew. She ventured out of her room only for Music Therapy, for a change of pace (luckily it wasn't a movement day, because she was still fairly tired) and then disappeared back to her room when she was supposed to be at psychodrama.

Wednesday was better she went to all of her groups except Art Therapy which she missed by accidentally oversleeping. She even went to CBT after lunch. Root didn't anticipate it being all that pleasant, but if she was _at_ the session then she could maybe pick Roger's brain for some things to put down, Danny had been no help at all.

Thursday, she was up on time, made it to breakfast and did all her groups except Trauma, still avoiding Dana like the plague. As Roger had predicted things were awkward in the dining room. Tina was still sat at the far end of their table, and while Roger and Root were still cross enough with her to ignore this fact, Lauren was wavering and becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with shutting Tina out, but it was to be expected as the two shared a room.

Her entire consideration that week was making sure to cross every **t** and dot every **i** in anticipation of the hearing. Even with The Machine refusing to intervene she wasn't going to give up… Root was a con artist. How hard could this situation be to play? She could show the courts and The Machine that she didn't need to be here anymore. Surely, after she got out of here, after Monday, it would be all downhill from here.


	27. Circling the Wagons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Ridge Stone staff prep for the upcoming court hearing...

"I'm sure you have other things more important to be doing. Anita," Dr. Carmichael forced a smile. "You really don't need to keep coming to these meetings."

"I think I do Ron," Dr. McEntire replied, "and you know that."

Dr. Carmichael huffed, and put his glasses on, pulling together the papers he'd prepared for the meeting, it was all hands on deck today, in advance of the hearing that was to take place on Monday, including Lee Worther, the hospital's lawyer, who would be responsible for making their case for keeping 'Robin' on as an involuntary patient, and Dr. Jennings from administration, who didn't actually practice, but instead was dedicated solely to testification on the subject of patient assessments at exactly these kinds of trials, or to defend the practices of the hospital in the occasional lawsuit. 

Neither of these new additions were aware of the true extent of Dr. Carmichael's seclusion boondoggle, but they were as everyone was, vaguely aware that there had been a 'mishandled seclusion episode' with the patient in question… which in such vague terms could mean anything as mundane as having the first assessment check at 90 minutes instead of 60.

"So coming up this Monday we have a hearing for…" Mr. Worther checked his folder, "Robin Farrow… on the grounds of… continued homicidal ideation and gestures."

"She was admitted on E in a catatonic state," Dr. Jennings squinted at his own folder. "How exactly did we get from there to here?"

"Well, it's true she came in catatonic," Dr. Carmichael explained, "but the episode in question started when she was shot in the shoulder during a psychotic break in which she was brandishing a gun at her Uncle, with apparent intent to kill. Between that and her record of assault, she was immediately transferred here to M upon regaining lucidity and I think we can all agree that was the correct choice considering later events."

"You're referring to the incident on May 30th?" Dr. Jennings asked. "When she put a pen to your neck and threatened to drive it in?"

"And also the incident on the 12th, among other smaller issues."

"June 12th… she… provoked another client into beating her up?" Mr. Worther was suspicious. "That seems like a spurious thing to put in someone's record."

"She admitted to it," Alex introjected. "She was somewhat proud of her handiwork. She had a personal beef with the other patient. She wanted him to lose privilege levels, and he did."

"And the incident with the pen, there was a demand attached, a demand for a cellular phone... " Mr. Worther mused.

"So her behavior is goal oriented," Dr. Jennings concluded. "It's not based in delusion or a general lack of control over her actions."

"Absolutely," Dr. Carmichael replied. "She's completely lucid at this point, and reality testing is fully intact, with the exception of her persistent auditory hallucination, and even then she needs to use a telephone to suspend disbelief and hear it. She knows exactly what she's doing, and she knows she has the hearing on Monday."

"She's very smart, she's been gaming the evaluation system," Alex added. "We only figured it out a week ago. Finding ways to do what she wants, when she wants, without it ever being noticed or marked as deliberate noncompliance, much like when she manipulated Andrew into hurting her."

"That's why it's important that we all get on the same page today," Dr. Carmichael said. "She's going to be bringing her manipulation A-Game in court. We need to have all our ducks in a row."

"And we'll need to be prepared for the fallout," Dr. McEntire added.

"Fallout?"  Dr. Jennings asked.

"She's been convinced since the start that the judge will absolutely rule in her favor," Dr. Carmichael state.

"When that doesn't pan out," Alex agreed, "It's going to be backslide city."

"Jerry has offered to come in on Monday, just for the hearing," Dr. McEntire added. "And I think we should take him up on that."

"Jerry?" Dr. Jennings blinked.

"He's one of our floor techs," Dr. McEntire explained. "For whatever reason, she likes him."

"I think she has a little crush," Alex smirked.

"I very much doubt that," Dr. Carmichael, snarked. "She-"

"Ron," Dr. McEntire scolded. "Enough. It's not a crush, and we'll leave it at that. Regardless, if things go south outside the facility… he's definitely one of the people I would want on the scene. The others would be Alex, Danny or Gloria… but we can't spare any of them."

"Go south?"

"She's a flight risk," Dr. Carmichael pronounced. "And I wouldn't put it past her to hurt someone in the process. The transport company has already been alerted we're going to want to have her in full ambulatory restraints in transit."

"Okay, okay," Dr. Jennings tried to control the conversation, "We're not going to need Mr. Worth for that part, so let's hold off on transport and crisis considerations for now and deal with our case. The crux of our assertion that she needs to remain in our care is?"

"She has a stunted capacity for empathy, inability to feel remorse, professed homicidal ideation, and freely admits that the only thing standing between her and actually acting on that ideation is the fear of disapproval from her god… an 11 year old girl she talks to on the phone," Dr Carmichael explained, "and any time someone or something disrupts her connection to that god, she becomes actively violent. That's what precipitated the attack on me, on her uncle, and an attack on Dr. Miller downstairs, although that was with a blunt object so intent to kill isn't quite so clear. She's another Aileen Wuornos waiting to happen."

"And we expect her to somehow manipulate her way out of that?"

"We expect her to  _ try _ . She can be very beguiling when she wants to be, you'll see that when you meet with her. We're not expecting her to bring any logically valid defense, but instead that she may well present herself so very harmless in appearance in behavior as to make it difficult to believe she poses anyone an immediate enough danger that she can't be handled with outpatient treatment."

"Is it possible that's true?"

"No. Even if we believed she was safe enough for a conditional release, Robin has no permanent home address, and despite her manipulation of the charting system, has not shown any indication that she's invested in getting well. Even when she attends her groups, she resists meaningful treatment at almost every turn."

"Almost?"

"She sometimes participates in Anger Management," Alex explained, "and she does between half and a third of the written work for CBT. The only thing she seems to have any actual interest in is learning and applying conditioning techniques, which offer the possibility of retraining thought processes and behaviors without engaging in  _ any  _ introspection on the underlying causes."

"She wants a quick-fix." Dr. Carmichael explained. "Something to get rid of our reason to keep her here without doing any real work on  _ herself…  _ but it doesn't work that way. If the cause is still under there, it's  _ going  _ to come back."  

"So the crux of the petition here is that she remains a danger to others, yes?" Mr. Worther asked. "What we would want to see from Ms. Farrow before we're comfortable releasing her would be meaningful progress toward reducing rather than suppressing homicidal urges, by participating fully in treatment opportunities designed to target the source of these feelings, rather than simply stop the actions associated with them."

"And that she be compliant with a stable course of maintenance medication," Dr. Carmichael added, "We've only just got her off the benzodiazepines that were prescribed for the catatonia, so we haven't had time yet to even begin working on medication for her current issues. That's the other document we're filing, a course of treatment compliance order for antipsychotic medication."

"You'll get me the paperwork on the treatment plan, by end of day today yes?" Mr. Worther scribbled something into his notebook. "We're going to need to have it pretty locked down, considering how lucid you say she can appear. Which medications you want to try in which order and what the goal is for each of them."

"I'll get with Dr. Leipman right after this," Dr. Carmichael nodded. "While Dr. Jennings meets with Robin."

"Dana, was there anything you wanted to add?" Dr. Jennings directly addressed the trauma therapist, who still hadn't spoken.

"Nothing I want to say that Alex hasn't already," she shrugged. "Trauma integration is one of the groups she doesn't participate in. This past week she hasn't even come to the group."

"So that's one of the things we'd like to see more participation in," Mr. Worth surmised.

"We can discuss the full extent of that later," Dr. McEntire tried to smooth things over before they got out of hand. "The point is that we need to see more introspection, and recognition of the falsehood of certain underpinning beliefs, like the idea that humanity is more than 75% horrible people who should probably die."

 

* * *

 

"I'm Dr. Jennings," he offered his hand to Root who was already seated on the couch in Ronald's office, but she didn't take it, both hands remaining wrapped around the phone in her lap. "We're talking today… instead of your usual session with Dr. Carmichael, so I can get to know you a little better before your hearing on Monday."

She rolled her eyes and sighed, before she stared back at him with an expression that suggested that she had already judged him as intellectually wanting.

"Do you… do you understand what I'm saying Robin?"

She laughed lightly through her nose and nodded in the affirmative. Lips twisted in an attempt to suppress a ridiculous grin at the absurdity of his inquiry. It was almost as if he hadn't read any of the information in her file.

"You… you don't really want to be talking to me, do you," her face said it all. "Okay… what I need for you to understand is that this is pretty much your one and only chance to get a second opinion. I already have reports from Dr. Carmichael, the nurses and several of your group leads, but what I don't have is your take on all of this."

"There's very little value in engaging in he-said, she-said when the numbers are against you," Root replied, leaving the phone in her left hand and walking the first fingers of her right hand along a seam on the couch. "I'm already quite aware of what they're recommending to you, and the astronomical unlikelihood that you're going to contradict that in court. We wouldn't need to bother going if you could be convinced that I don't need to be here."

"That's true," he nodded, jotting down something on his paper. Root pointedly did not ask what he was writing. It seemed like paranoia bait and she had no intention of showing this person anything other than serenity. "Do  _ you  _ think you need to be here? Because if you're willing to remain voluntarily, we don't have to go in that case either."

"No. I'm  _ not  _ willing to remain here voluntarily. Would  _ you  _ want to stay someplace like this?"

"No, but I'm not a danger to myself or others."

"Neither am I, although I suppose that  _ would  _ be the point of contention," Root seemed more pleased with herself than she had any right to be at the observation and far too relaxed with the situation… almost bored.

"Robin, if I asked Dr. Carmichael back into the room right now, how do you think he'd react to… all of this," he gestured at her, head to toe.

"Likely the same as always," Root replied, "with barely constrained frustration and anxiety. He didn't like me to begin with… and after the business with the pen, less so."

"He wouldn't remark upon this… change of demeanor?"

"There  _ is  _ no change in demeanor, although you  _ have  _ piqued my curiosity now," she leaned forward elbows on knees, eyes narrowing with curiosity. "What could they have  _ possibly  _ described that would cause you to assume  _ this  _ is out of the ordinary?"

Dr. Jennings was taken aback for a moment, and thought back to the conversation he'd had earlier and the things he'd read in her file. He had  _ assumed  _ based on that, and the fact that she was on M-Unit in the first place that he would be interacting with someone more directly hostile than what he was being presented with, but upon consideration realized that nothing of what any of them said had explicitly described her as such. He had supposed the incongruous calm was intended as an attempt at mask of harmlessness, but if his colleagues believed she could fool a judge, this was not what they were talking about. This didn't seem hostile, but it wasn't harmless either, more… unsettling. She was a little too calm, a little too still, her eyes a little too wide, eye contact just a little too long. In retrospect, she'd taken control of the conversation from the start without a word, refusing his hand and making him work to get her to speak, and now by leaning forward and holding his gaze she had  _ him _ on the defensive. If she was a serial killer in the making, she was more Hannibal Lector than Leatherface. 

"They said you can be quite…  _ violent _ ," he replied after a time. "Though upon reflection, that doesn't mean much in regards to your overall demeanor, does it." 

"Mmmm…" she sat back, propping her right elbow on the back of the couch, forearm draping forward lazily, apparently content with his answer. 

"Nothing to say to that? Not going to try and convince me that this is a sign that they're wrong about the danger you pose to others?"

"Would you believe me if I did?" she replied patronizingly, knowing the answer was no.

"You have this whole situation pretty well figured out, don't you," he asked, changing tack. "You know my mind is essentially already made up, and you don't want to give me anything to use against you."

"I've been arrested enough times to know when it's not in my best interest to speak."

"Multiple convictions for assault," he lifted the folder in his hand slightly. "Plenty of experience with the justice system. You know the letter of the law, and you the procedures of the hospital, and you're playing a little game of chess with us as the pawns."

"You sell yourself short," she replied, "It seems to me you're a bishop, or at least a rook… and not one of  _ my  _ pieces either."

"A bishop? Not a King or a Queen?"

"Of course not, Dr. McEntire is clearly the queen… and Ronald is the king."

"The one you need to take out to win…"

"I was thinking more in terms of the utter uselessness of the king," she replied, with a smirk that suggested it might well be both. "It can only move one space in any direction, and relies on all the other pieces to cover for it."

"You're referring to the seclusion incident, yes?"

"Is that what we're calling it?" 

"In your view… what part of that was mishandled?"

"They haven't told you… have they?" she smiled, and then chuckled almost silently. 

"I know what happened," Dr. Jennings lied, "I just wanted to get your take on the situation…  I may not be able to be convinced not to go through with the petition, but I do get to decide how  _ long  _ we're asking for, and I get the distinct impression that something needs to be resolved here in order for you to make any progress toward being released."

"They haven't told you," Root reasserted pointing at him, playfully, without moving her arm from the couch. "It's not that you're not quite adept at lying, it's just that if you knew what happened it would be  _ extremely  _ apparent how things went wrong."

"Humor me."

"You people are always saying that," she replied almost boredly, "Why should I humor you? I'm the one who's trapped. You're here by choice,  _ and  _ getting paid for it."

Dr. Jennings sighed, and his shoulders slumped. Her general indifference to the entire affair wasn't something he was used to encountering. Normally the person sat across from him was either far enough gone to gladly explain how it's possible that they are in fact the Emperor of France, or hopeful enough of release to attempt to convince him of their improvement. 

"What happened," she took pity on Dr. Jennings, "was that he put me in seclusion for an entire day, apropos of nothing, as a supposed  _ therapeutic  _ action. I shouldn't have to explain to you how that's wrong, should I?."

"Therapeutic action… you believe he secluded you without any due cause, as an attempt at some kind of treatment?"

"No," she glanced down and to the side, a shade of melancholy tinging her smile. "He was doing it in an attempt to force  _ compliance  _ with treatment. It worked… for all the wrong reasons."

"Don't you think it's more likely that there  _ was  _ due cause, but you're unable to understand it?"

Root sighed deeply with a rueful smirk, resting her temple on her right hand, gaze floating to the window boredly. It was becoming increasingly clear to her that this entire exercise was a waste of time.  

"Robin?"

"I don't know why we're having this conversation if you're just going to disbelieve everything I say," she condescended. "Conversation breaks down without at least the presumption of honesty."

"I believe that  _ you  _ believe what you say is true Robin," Dr. Jennings replied, "but it's our job to help you discern delusion from reality, and it would be irresponsible of me to reinforce any perception of persecution you may have."

"It's  _ not _ a persecutory delusion," Root replied, patronizingly, leaning forward on her elbows, again using posture to intimidate subtly. "I'm not delusional."

"You've been speaking to God a disconnected cellular phone, Robin. You say he's chosen you for some higher calling. That doesn't sound a little delusional to you?"

"Even if, and I'm not conceding anything, but even _if_ She were in fact an auditory hallucination, I think you'd find that my belief in her existence and the veracity of her words would be my _sole_ departure from reality."

"May I see the phone?" he asked, holding out his hand. She recognized the test for what it was, and made a show of rolling her eyes at the absurdity, before plopping the phone into his palm. She leaned back in her seat, the expression on her face was one that suggested she had proved her point. "Now what would you say, if I told you that I'm going to keep this for the weekend? That you can't have it back until after the hearing on Monday?"

"I'd be somewhat put out," Root conceded perfunctorily, not believing for a moment that he would do that.

"And if I said you were not getting it back at all?" he dropped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

"I'd be slightly  _ more  _ put out," she cracked a smile, involuntarily, even as she could feel a nascent anxiety brewing in the back of her mind… that he might be sincere after all.

"But you wouldn't try to kill me?"

"Over three days? No. That's not so long." She said it as much to reassure herself as in answer to him. Three days. The Machine would know what happened. The Machine would wait for her. The Machine would still be there when she got another phone.

"Three days?"

"After the judge declines your petition, I could buy a new phone," she tossed her head to the side casually. "It's not that complicated. You can get a prepaid at any convenience store these days."

"The discharge would take another 72 hours after you get back," he reminded her. 

"Then  _ six _ days… It's not  _ that _ big a deal." It's still a measurable finite time, short enough that she would not be replaced.

"And if the judge didn't rule in your favor? If we kept you here, with no phone? Would you try to kill me then?"

"I wouldn't be happy about it, but no." Root's lips twitched, pulling the smile out of shape. "But I still can't think of any conditions presently under which homicide would be an… effective… course of action. That's kind of been the point of all of this, hasn't it?"

"So, you would contend that you're… cured?"

"You know better than that," she crinkled her brow, "there's no curing things like this. The question isn't of whether or not I'm cured, but whether or not I'm managing myself… which I know am, and which Ronald contests that I am not, which brings us back around to he-said she-said, in which I am still not engaging."

Dr. Jennings sighed, not really sure what to do with the rest of the hour. Root looked away from him, again gazing at the window, uncertain if he intended to keep the phone or not, but certain that a dominance play was out of the question at the moment, so it was better not to try and stare him down. She kept reminding herself that even if he did it was only a few days… there was no way she was going to get petitioned, but she was still nervously regulating her every move at this point, in case it would sway his decision in one direction or the other.

"What are you thinking Robin?"

Root glanced back at the doctor only long enough to make it clear she had no intent to answer the question. 

"Alright here's how this is going to go," he said. "I have something of yours. Something you want back. Right?" He didn't wait for a reply. "So one of two things is going to happen now. You're going to talk to me, or I am going to keep it until after the hearing."

She still didn't reply, but she did shift back in her seat so she was facing him again, expression one of impatience, as if waiting for a late bus.

"I'll ask again, what are you thinking?"

"Well I  _ was _ wondering what I'd have to do to get my phone back from you, but now I know…"

"If there were a magic pill, something you could just take it once, and all of this would be done with… you'd feel at peace, and not have some gut urge to hurt others that you  _ have _ to manage… would you take it?"

"I suppose," Root replied noncommittally, "barring horrible side effects or something."

"What if you had to take it for… a month, or two months, and it did have side effects, but only for the duration of treatment."

"Maybe? This is all pretty hypothetical. We both know that doesn't exist."

"Maybe it does," Dr. Jennings replied, "Maybe that's what cooperating with treatment might do for you. Food for thought…" he put the phone back on the table. 

"Right," she pursed her lips, and took the phone. "Are we done here?"

"I think we are," Dr. Jennings nodded, "Thank you for your time."


	28. Petitioned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the court predictably sides with Ridge Stone and not with Root...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Madlaw for some help on the details of how these hearings go down. It helps to have a friend who's both a great writer, and also a lawyer who's done these things. :)

She didn't know what she'd expected… more consideration perhaps? That the judge would, after hearing everything that was said, reading everything that was to be read, would return to his chambers for a time before rendering judgement, but that, apparently is not how it went. He wasn't a doctor, he wasn't to be convinced one way or another. Presuming he believed what was set before him on paper, there was nothing really to think about.

She'd dressed this morning in the button down white sleeveless shirt that Finch had apparently replaced her ruined coat and shirt with after she'd been shot, and a pair of khaki colored pants, and left the sweater in her room, making every attempt to look ordinary, and not like… well… a mental patient. She'd put her hair up in a twisted half updo, not entirely dissimilar to the one she'd worn as Veronica Sinclair, but with more intricacy. She wanted to look quaint, but show a clear degree of wherewithal, something that would require a lucid mind and planning to achieve. The results were pleasing enough. In the holding room, where they took her out of the transport restraints, Paula, the nurse that traveled with them, offered her a pair of earrings and a bracelet to wear. Patients weren't allowed these sort of things, but for court, as she knew from a few of the times her aliases had been before a judge, there was always supposed to be effort taken to ensure the person being judged didn't appear before the court any differently than someone who didn't just come from jail… or the mental hospital. The garb of innocence, they called it.

The Machine said she wouldn't interfere in the justice system, that she would support whatever the judge said, and up till this moment Root, for her part, had been certain she was getting out but, with the judgement imminent, she was getting a case of the nerves. She said she'd abide by the court, but she didn't say Root _had_ to stay anymore. If the judge says she can go, she can go… but if he doesn't? She already knew that M-Unit was nearly impenetrable, without access to the computer systems at least. When they got to the holding room she'd be put back in transport restraints and that would be another 60 days stuck… Root briefly considered asking to be allowed to use the bathroom, but dismissed it out of hand. They'd expect she was going to try and get out the window, and be all over her. She wasn't dumb enough to try that, but it would seriously impinge her ability to make a break for it in the hall. There was nearly no one in the gallery however, and only one guard at the door. No one expected anyone in the gallery at these kind of hearings to have managed to get a weapon past the metal detectors at the main doors. If she needed one that was the way out, that meant it was in her best interest to sit as near the front of the jury box as possible.

She stood when instructed to do so, hands clasped in front of her, calm, composed, serene, just like she'd been since the moment transport had arrived to take her here this morning, the best to demonstrate her good behavior… but as the judge spoke she could feel the world lurch and slide. Another 60 days. He was giving them another 60 days. He was _condemning_ her to another 60 days. _No_.

Root backed up… one step… two. When the tops of her thighs contacted the rail separating the gallery from the jury box, she transferred her weight to it and pivoted, neatly vaulting over and sprinting over and down the center aisle before anyone realized what was going on. The sole guard at the entrance to the gallery balked, fumbling at the snap on his taser holster, and that gave her time to elbow him in the face and bolt out the door. Hand to hand fighting had never been her strong suit, but every bit of it she knew was oriented _entirely_ toward escape.

"DAMNIT!" Paula swore someplace back at the front of the courtroom.

"ROBIN! STOP!" she could hear Jerry in pursuit, and by the footsteps he wasn't alone.

She rounded a corner, dodging easily past various civilian guests and staff, and concentrating primarily on staying in motion, staying out of their grasp long enough to get her bearings. Because she was considered a flight risk, they'd come in through the prisoner entrance so they'd have use of the holding area and somewhere to put her in and out of restraints. That meant she had no idea where she was going, trying to find the public entrance/exit. If this had been a job she'd have studied the layout. She'd know where she was going. She was out of her depth, but only by a little bit. Nothing about the way she was dressed gave any indication to the people in the hallway that she was meant to be captive, although her running and darting certainly indicated she was escaping _something_.  With Jerry, Lewis, and two techs from the transport company all coming after her in scrubs, they would inevitably put two and two together within seconds, but she could do a _lot_ with a few seconds.

Stairs. Down. Down would be out. They were on the second floor. On the first floor any window that opens becomes a viable exit. She had to find the stairs. Out of hallway. Left or right. Left or right. Left. Courthouse guards! Reverse course, pass the intersection. Blue scrubs to her left. Shit… they're catching up. Guards ahead as well… but stairs between her and them. Faster. Beat them to the st-

" _NO!_ Shit, sorry Jerry!" She realized only belatedly that he was the one who'd grabbed her, and whom she'd just elbowed in the face. In that moment of hesitation Lewis and one of the transport Techs were on her, each locking one arm. She twisted and kicked trying to break loose of their grip.  "NO. NO! _I'm NOT going_ _BACK there_!"

"Robin," Jerry came around to enter her field of vision, where she could see him wiping a bloody lip. "You're going back one way or the other. You have to know that." He sighed, as she continued to struggle against the hold, and gestured to Paula to wait as she arrived and took the syringe from her pocket. He wanted to see if he could talk 'Robin' down some, make the sedation less forceful. "Look around, What are you going to do even if you get away from them? There's too many people here."

Root took stock of the situation. Even if she could manage to get free of this hold, the court officers were coming down the hall toward them from up ahead and from behind as well. The seconds elapsed since she was stopped in her tracks were more than enough for them to catch up.

"I won't go back there," she replied through bared teeth, no longer struggling quite as hard, but keeping up a degree of resistance as a token gesture. She knew he was right, she was caught, but the prospect of going back to Ridge Stone for another _two months_ was unbearable. She felt like crying and screaming all at once, but did neither. "I _can't._ I won't survive another 60 days penned up like that. It's going to kill me."

"You _can_ make it another round Robin. I know you have that in you."

"No. I _can't_ , and I won't. I'll _lose my mind_ ," she insisted.

Lewis chuckled at the fact that someone being involuntarily hospitalized could possibly be worried they were going to loose their mind, like it wasn't gone already. Jerry shot him a withering look. Root didn't even know what she was trying to achieve at this point. It wasn't as if she was going to be able to talk Jerry into letting her go.

"You can survive Robin, and you will... and if you can stop fighting and stay still, Paula can inject you in the _arm_ , so you don't have to flash the whole hallway." He explained, trying to spare her the embarrassment of having her pants pulled halfway down her butt for a gluteal IM, which would be their only option if she wouldn't stay _still_.

"No, NO, _NO_ ," she suddenly found a reserve of strength and yanked down and backwards trying to escape again, even as tears began to spring from her eyes. She knew what was in the syringe: the Haldol/Ativan combination Ridge Stone favored for emergency sedation. Ativan meant the very real possibility of going thru withdrawal symptoms all over again, having only just recovered from the first bout a few days prior. "I can't have that stuff in me again I-"

"Robin. Robin! There's _no_ Ativan. I promise," he interrupted. Root locked eyes with him, intently, searching for any clue that he was lying. She struggled only as much as she could now without breaking eye contact. "No Ativan. It's Haldol. Only Haldol and nothing else. _Please_ Robin. You know this has to happen. There's no way around this for either of us."

"I swear to god Jerry if that turns out to be a lie…" she let the sentence hang, stopped pulling, and relaxed her muscles, swallowing the lump in her throat. Her shoulders would have slumped if her upper arms weren't being held up by the techs. Her breathing was laboured, and her hair had come undone. Root deliberately looked left as Paula gently grasped her right upper arm and slipped the needle in, devolving into full ugly cry as she could feel the liquid burning in her muscle.

"Thank you Robin."

"I despise you."

"No you don't," he sighed. "But you are _very_ angry with me, and you have every right. Can you sit down for us please? I know it feels like you can still walk, but that could change in as little as five minutes, and I don't want you falling, okay? One of us bleeding is enough don't you think?"

She craned her neck around, still in the hold, and saw the other tech from the transport company had brought around a wheel chair.  She complied, looking up with a tearful sneer back at Jerry, not resisting as the transport techs used the integrated Velcro restraints to pin her wrists to the arms and bucked her legs in.

"You're not even supposed to be here today, " Root said, accusingly. Had he only come in today to witness her humiliation?

"It's a good thing I am though," he winked. "Or else there very well might have been Ativan in that syringe."

The six of them, four techs, Paula and Root, made their way back to the holding room where their things were, accessing it through the currently empty courtroom that abutted the one still in session. Dr. Jennings looked up from his chair, having not helped with the pursuit at all. He studied the figure in the chair, disheveled, jaw clenched, concentrated more on maintaining composure than anything else. She'd gotten the tears under control quickly but with her hands restrained and no tissues, some of them still clung to her face, and her nose was running slightly as well.

"She's taken off for outer space this one. Damn, and she seemed so normal on the way over…" one of the transport techs mused to the doctor.

"Nah, she's still with us…" he gave Root a look of shared disapproval for the way the techs were talking about her like she wasn't there. The sedation wasn't in full effect yet. It wasn't as if she couldn't understand them. "Trust me, she's been on my unit five weeks now. Robin and reality are on pretty good terms. Aren't you?"

"That's what I keep telling you all," she replied dully.

"The judge didn't seem to think so," the transport tech said, digging around in the restraint bag for the ankle hobble.

"The judge agreed that _neither_ her auditory hallucination _nor_ her tendency toward grandiosity impaired her relation to reality enough to warrant petition," Jerry corrected, as he crossed the room. "It's just the homicidal impulses that are a problem."

" _Just_ the homicidal impulses," Lewis scoffed.

While they put the ankle restraints on Root, Jerry crossed to the small table beside the door to the court, and picked up her phone from the basket where they'd all deposited theirs before entering. He pocketed his own as well before bringing Root's phone back over to her, and after holding it up for a moment to ensure she knew what he was doing, reached forward and dropped it into the breast pocket of her shirt. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to be grateful, but she couldn't muster it at the moment… she wasn't exactly happy with The Machine either right now. Just then, all heads turned to the courtroom door as Mr. Worth walked in with a folder.

"Oh good, you got her back," he remarked. "I've got the paperwork," he held up a folder, mostly only addressing Dr. Jennings now. "Are you ready to go?"

"Is everything under control here?" Dr. Jennings asked Paula, standing up.

"I think so," she nodded, paying little attention to the work the transport techs were doing. "Jerry got her still enough to tranq voluntarily, not calm but still enough, and it looks like the Haldol alone is working, so we don't have to deal with the complications of benzodiazepine withdrawal again."

"Good… good…" he picked up his bag. "I trust you have it from here," he said to the assembled, and departed with the lawyer.

"Hang on a second before you do the wrist restraints," Jerry said, retrieving his backpack from the corner of the room. "You want your sweater Robin?" he pulled her grey cotton cardigan out of his backpack. "Yes I was in your room. Sorry. I just thought you might want this on the way back." He explained when he noticed her knitted brow.

"She's already busted your lip," the tech said skeptically, fastening the belt around her waist, but leaving her wrists velcroed to the chair. "You want to give her a chance to do more damage?

"She's clever enough to know that her window of opportunity for escape is quite firmly closed at this point. Right Robin?" Root nodded. "Sweater?"

Root shrugged noncommittally. It _would_ feel a lot better, but no one else needed to know that. Jerry approached the chair and draped the sweater around her shoulders before he helped her maneuver her rubbery arms down the sleeves. The sweater was a little warm in this weather, but it was worth being a little bit stifled for the comfort it brought, like a cloak, or a blanket. Some mammalian protective instinct or something.

"Put those on twelve inches, would you?" Jerry said, as the transport techs slipped her wrists into the cuffs attached to the belt at her waist.

"We were ordered to set them full flush to the waist," the tech replied. "Did she give you a concussion or are you _trying_ to get someone hurt?"

"She wasn't _sedated_ then. Things have changed now," Jerry replied, digging again in his backpack.  "And she's going to need her hands. I want her to have something to drink in the van. It's hot out and she gets dehydrated, twig that she is, and Haldol's not going to help that."

It sounded plausible enough, but really she'd been fine about hydration since the withdrawal cleared up and dehydration wasn't _usually_ an issue with a single dose. Paula knew that, but when the transport techs looked to her to confirm, she backed Jerry's play. He'd come in on his off day specifically to lend his rapport with 'Robin' to the situation, so she trusted his judgement.

Jerry shouldered his backpack, as did Lewis, Paula picked up her purse and nurse travel bag and the transport techs guided them all, pushing Root, back out the way they'd originally come in, down the elevator and to the van. When they reached the van, Jerry helped Root to climb falteringly into the back seat, legs wobbly from sedation. Paula and Lewis sat in the middle row the transport techs climbed into the front, and they were on the road, back to Ridge Stone.

"Juice?" Jerry reached into his bag and produced a small soft sided insulated lunch bag, and from within, one of the apple juice boxes that Root was partial to.

"Why?" Root asked, quietly, almost timidly. The Haldol was affecting more than her physical coordination, her mind was woozy and foggy, and she was starting to having a hard time with speech. Seated and belted in the van. She tried to arrange as much coverage with her sweater as she could, the impairment from the drugs making her feel vulnerable and exposed.  It wasn't as effective as it could have been, the foot long straps of the arm restraints pulled it open whenever she moved her arms.

"You like it… I mean if you don't want it that's okay too…"

She shook her head no, " _Why?"_

"Why did I bring the juice? And the sweater? And come in on my day off?"

She nodded.

"Because I knew it was going to be rough for you when they renewed the petition," he said, handing her the juice. "I mean I didn't know you were going to run like that… you're _fast_."

Root smiled a little around the straw.

"And you have _very_ bony elbows."

"Sorry," she replied, slightly slurred, and looked like she might mean it.

"But I _did_ know you weren't going to take it well. I know I wouldn't in your position. It's pretty hardcore bad news and… I guessed there was a likelihood you'd resist coming back. I think we both know if I hadn't have been here that could have gone down very badly for you. I mean… this smarts," he touched his lip, "But can you imagine what would have happened if you'd have clocked some of the other techs in the face? Once you pull that kind of thing, no one is required to give you any leeway at all."

She sighed. He was right of course… but the question was more why did _he_ give her any leeway. She was torn between being grateful for being handles with some degree of respect, and feeling like it was patronizing that she wasn't just bowled over, pinned down, injected and bundled back off to the hospital in the tightest available restraint.

"And I'm not sure anyone has paid enough attention to notice that scary homicidal Robin feels… _calmer_ with her big floppy sweater than without. It's not just a fashion statement." He didn't want to say 'safer' even though it was what he meant. He was pretty sure she'd take offense. Even if he didn't say it, the implication got through to Root, who shifted, embarrassed in her seat and stopped adjusting her lapels, concentrating on the juice instead… the sweet taste. The sensation of swallowing. She remembered something from Wellness about 'rest and digest' being the opposite of 'fight or flight.' There wasn't much in these little juice boxes, so it didn't take long for her to finish it.

"There's one more thing in my bag, but I'm not sure if you want it…" Jerry said as he took back the empty carton. After he returned the carton to the lunchbag, he reached down deeper in the bag and and pulled out the Panther doll Root had thrown in Tina's face a little over a week ago. Someone had carefully sewn his arm back on, but they'd used black embroidery floss to do it. It almost looked like it was a part of the Uglydoll motif that way, like the arm was _supposed_ to be patched back on.  "Lauren said to let you know that if you want this, there are… no strings attached? I guess it was from Tina?" There was no secret on the unit that there had been a falling out among the friends. "But it wound up with Lauren and Roger, and  they thought you might want it back, but she also said if you think it's stupid you don't _have_ to take it… no pressure."

Root stared at the floorboards of the car for a time, long enough that Jerry was wondering if she had even heard him, or if the sedation had deepened. In truth she was debating her answer. It was a strong temptation at the moment. She was dizzy, and upset, and it was _right there_ and she wanted it. On the other hand strings or no strings she'd still know who it came from, and that could well be a lie; they might still expect something of her. Not to mention that if she took it then Jerry would know she used plushies, and Lewis or Paula could turn around and see too… but then they'd already seen her crying and fighting and acting a complete fool back at the courthouse, and everything felt horrible, and who cares anymore?

After a few moments, she lurched abruptly and jerked the doll from his hands, shrinking back into her seat clutching it against her front possessively, and hunching slightly over it, fingers distorting the head as she clutched a portion of the fabric on the back of it tightly, and pressed her face into the narrow top, nuzzling into it so her temples were stroked by its pointed ears, and her eyes were rubbed by the pressure of the top of it's head.

Jerry tried not to look as dismayed as he felt. He'd thought she'd probably take it, those friends of hers knew her well, but something about the way this was all transpiring, her white knuckle grip on the panther, and the way she closed in around it… it was hard to watch. He was pretty sure she was crying again, silently, but it was hard to tell with her hair and the doll in the way. It wasn't that he was trying to hide his reaction for his own pride or professionalism, he just worried she would interpret it as judgement, and try to hide again, deprive herself of this when she clearly needed it.

It was sad, realizing that she was suffering so badly for her own pride at the hospital. The stuffed toy _helped_ her, but it hadn't come up in 5 weeks. It probably wasn't the only thing she was denying herself because pride would not allow her to risk anyone seeing her. It was already well established at this point that the best thing to do for 'Robin' when she was having a bad time was to give her space, but the running theory was that she just hated help that much, and solitude really does help some people. But now he was starting to understand it was more about being away from observation and free to self-soothe without losing face, and that made every day inpatient another day of suffering without at least several of her preferred coping mechanisms solely on the grounds that they were out of line with her stoic, sadistic, indifferent facade. Ironically, unlike the sorts of behaviors she didn't seem to care to hide, the ones they were trying to extinguish, things like hugging a stuffed doll were actually completely healthy methods of emotional regulation.

Eventually, her grip started to slack and her shoulders swayed, and it became apparent to Jerry that 'Robin' was no longer conscious.

"Robin?" he queried. He didn't want to wake her -it was probably _better_ to sleep- but they had to keep an eye on her level of sedation. He'd already watched her slip from 'awake and cooperative' to notably 'drowsy,' but now that she was out, the monitoring would have to become considerably more deliberate, testing her response to attempts to rouse. Her only reply was a wordless groan of protest, clearly preferring to remain asleep, so neither 'deeply' nor 'unarousable sedated.' "Robin can you look at me for a moment?"

"Whyyyyyy?"

"Nevermind," he replied. "Go back to sleep." If she could still form words that answered his question. He'd check again in another twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes from that they'd be back at the hospital and getting her out of the van would be test enough. In the front Lewis was laughing with the transport techs, sharing stories they probably shouldn't be about patients they'd dealt with in the past. Paula was reading a magazine, and he wasn't really sure how she could do that without getting a splitting headache, he couldn't even look out a side window without getting carsick. Instead he put in a pair of headphones and listened to his favorite car ride playlist: an eclectic mix that, at least to Jerry, invoked the image of grand voyages, like ships setting sail, or a fantasy party riding out into the wilderness on horseback.

The second time he tried to rouse Root it took her a little longer to come to, but she told him off with a few choice words, reassuring him that she was still within safe sedation parameters before she drifted back off again. The doll was in her lap now, wrapped gently in her limp arms, and her chin tucked into her chest, and head swaying from side to side as the car motored down the highway. He was lost in the music when he felt the weight and the warmth to his side.

Quite entirely asleep now, Root had drooped to the side, finding his shoulder with her head. He sat stock still, eyes glancing to the side, not entirely certain how to respond to the situation. Her face was angled upward, and her mouth was slightly agape. It was not a pretty picture, no impropriety meant, just a typical sedated sloppy sleeper. He relaxed a bit. She was just slumped to the side. She could have just as easily have fallen to the other side, if the car had moved differently.

"You are way too much of a soft touch. I don't know how the hell you put up with patients like her," Lewis had turned in his seat. "Geez… what an ugly fuckin doll," he added, laying eyes on the Panther, entirely unaware of the fact that it was _meant_ to be ugly.

"She's only lightly sedated Lewis," he replied. "You do realize there's a not insubstantial chance she can hear you, and will remember it."

"I really don't care," the other tech laughed. 'I'm pretty sure she knows I can't stand her. I mean she's not as much of a bitch as Cindy but still…"

"Shut up," Jerry rolled his eyes.

"You got the hots for her or something?"

"No!" Jerry exclaimed, but kept his volume low, given the sleeping figure on his shoulder. Root stirred, at probably the worst possible time, shifting position in her sleep. She turned to get more comfortable, tucking her head in against Jerry's chest, and moving her left hand to hold on to his upper arm.

"Well she'd got the hots for you," Lewis giggled.

"She's asleep," Jerry replied, twisting awkwardly. He still didn't want to wake her, but Lewis was clearly getting the wrong idea. "She's _drugged_. Turn around and mind your own business." He didn't managed to dislodge her however. Even in her sedated state Root had a particularly strong grip, and eventually he gave up, crossing his own arms in front of himself in an attempt to maintain some semblance of propriety.

She didn't stir until they were off the highway, jerking back suddenly as she realized the position she was in, and looking around the van to see who had witnessed it, in her dazed state not quite processing that anyone could have seen in the time she was unconscious and not be looking now. Only Jerry looked back, shrugging awkwardly. She could tell by the way his arms were twined close to his front that he wasn't the one responsible for her winding up like that… which _had_ in fact been a concern of hers upon waking. Instead her concern now was that they were approaching Ridge Stone and soon would be getting out of the van. She pushed the Panther out of her lap, toward Jerry's backpack on the floor, fumblingly. It took a moment, but when he understood her intention, he took it back from her and stuffed it back into the bag. She didn't want to be seen with it on the way in.

Once on the other side of the unit's automatic security doors, Root was transferred from one chair to another, and the transport tech who had came up with them, to get their invoice signed off on took the transport company's chair back to his colleague waiting in the van. Lewis made his way to the nurses station quickly, eager to share the results of the outing with the betting pool. He hadn't been allowed to participate because he was going and might influence the outcome, but he was pleased to get to tell them that Francis had won, with his guess of: a won petition and an unsuccessful escape attempt involving an act of violence but ending in _voluntary_ sedation.

Jerry, meanwhile, undid Root's restraints, returning them to their carry bag, and rolled her back to her room, helping her from the chair into her bed and out of her shoes when they got there. She rolled partway onto her stomach, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders as he left, putting the phone back under the pillow where she kept it when she was in bed, and preparing to return to sleep, knowing it would be easy enough at this point. She woke up a moment later instead, when she felt an intrusion in the bed. She reached for it, defensively… only to find the panther, and see Jerry settling into the desk chair.

"What?"

"You can hide it under the blanket," he shrugged, "and someone has to make sure the Haldol doesn't stop you breathing… so since I'm not scheduled to be here anyway…" he shrugged. "Go to sleep. It's not like today is worth being awake for, is it?"

 _No_ , she agreed, silently, _It's really really not._


	29. Haldol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which neither being on nor waking up from haldol are any fun... and Root runs her mouth under sedation...

"That bad, huh?" Alex leaned against the door jam, peering in. Root was still out like a light, and somehow the panther doll had made it's way out from under the covers so it was laying face down on her right eye and cheek, it's damaged arm tickling her neck, it's body lying across her chest. The situation had to have gotten seriously out of hand, with Jerry's fat lip and the patient under sedation.

"She almost made the east staircase," Jerry replied, standing from the chair and walking past Alex so they were just outside the door, his tone indicating he considered this to be an impressive feat.

"Out of the courtroom… that's… yeah," Alex nodded and turned outward, keeping their conversation low both to avoid waking Robin, and avoid being overheard by anyone at the other end of the hall. It wasn't exactly common that anyone made a break for it, and he hadn't heard of anyone making it out of the courtroom itself, nevermind far enough down the hall to be near the stairs. "You gonna be okay if she wakes up on you?"

"Hmm? Oh… this?" Jerry taped gingerly at his lip. "I'm not concerned. It wasn't meant for me. She hesitated after she realized I was hurt… its probably the only reason we caught her _before_ the stairs."

"Accident?"

"No. Yes? I mean, she _meant_ to throw that elbow… but I get the impression, what with the 'Shit! Sorry Jerry!' it was meant for a different tech," he smirked. "I just happened to have the misfortune of being the first one to catch up to her. Lewis is the one who needs to watch his back… the transpo guys aren't here, and I've never seen her try to hurt a nurse, so Paula's probably safe..."

"Speaking of Paula, did she have to use the Ativan?"

"Nah, the Haldol worked. She's gonna have a heck of a hangover, but no rekindling the withdraw."

"Good… good," Alex sighed deeply. Being a high end private facility, Ridge Stone didn't have large numbers of involuntary patients, and far fewer still that they had to petition when their first 60 days were up. Most were either stable enough for outpatient by then, or converted to voluntary. Andrew was the only one besides 'Robin' on M-Unit at the moment, now that Abby had converted to voluntary but Alex, as a specialized therapist, worked multiple floors, and had seen it a few times before on the Eating Disorders and Schizophrenia wards, and a fair amount of the population on the adolescent units were _effectively_ involuntary, having been admitted against their wished by their parents. No one _ever_ took it well. "I'm going to have my work cut out for me," he mused.

"Yeah…" Jerry nodded. "She's pretty pissed." He glanced in at the sleeping patient, "But she's also preeeeeetty devastated. There was crying... and not the angry tears kind."

"Not that surprising," Alex shrugged. "I mean it is a little, because it's Robin, but it's not the _first_ time… and it is probably a wound on par with the other times."

"Other times? Plural? I know about the panic attack but…"

"Most of the night after the pen incident," Alex replied. "Seclusion and Robin do not mix. There's a couple times since that were with the anger issues, it came really close to me having to put her in there again, but… I couldn't do it. Ron really ruined it, not that it's great to begin with, but using it the way he did..." Alex shook his head. "It's never going to end up with her calming down in there. It's only going to escalate her."

"And we might need it again soon. I'm pretty sure we're in for a _very_ late day three freakout. It's been on hold while she was convinced she knew when she was getting out."

"I'm not even sure who's going to be able to handle that one… Danny maybe? You know Dr. Carmichael's not going to be any help at all, she doesn't even want to _see_ Dana, and the last time I broached something with her that wasn't anger I gave her a panic attack."

"Oh please, you know it's going to be the floor staff that wind-" he stopped abruptly at the sound of something, _someone_ , impacting the floor behind him. Alex and Jerry both turned their attention quickly back to the bed, watching the blanket slip off it and following its trail under the desk where Root, eyes barely open, was slowly folding herself into the small space, only the width of the chair, beneath it. With both of them out in the hall, she likely thought she was alone now. They didn't re-enter, just watching as she pulled her gangly limbs in under the desk with the rest of her, looking somewhat like a hermit crab withdrawing into its shell. "Well that's new."

"So is the purple thing, what was that?" Alex couldn't spot it anymore, presumably it was under the blanket under the desk with Robin.

"Gift from Tina… by way of Lauren," Jerry replied. "I wouldn't mention you saw it… or that," he indicated the desk with his eyes. It wasn't as if it would be a particularly easy thing to miss, that she was hiding under a desk, given that she seemed to have fallen back to sleep before pulling the remainder of the blanket in with her. "Unless you want to end up like Dana."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she doesn't want anyone to know about the stuffed… purple thing," he wasn't really sure what to call it either. All he knew was it was a morbid stuffed purple creature of unknown taxonomy which, as stuffed toys went, exactly what you would expect from someone like Robin, if you got past the fact that no one would expect her to have one in the first place. "And she's been avoiding Dana because she knows something Robin doesn't want her to know."

"Yeah, what the heck did Tina _tell_ her?"

"I didn't _ask_ ," Jerry was slightly offended. "I don't want to know… and to her credit Dana hasn't told anyone I don't think. Hold up a second… do you hear that?" He stepped carefully into the room and over to the desk, crouching slightly. Root was still asleep, head resting on her knees, on a lump under the blanket that was probably the panther being used as a makeshift pillow, emitting small pitiful sounding noises which only resolved to something approaching words as he got nearer.

"Snot fair," she almost whined, "Wannagome."

"Robin?"

"Gaggeddout. Geddoooooooout."

"Robin?"

"Donlie giddeeeeeer."

"You're… still zonked, aren't you."

"Gidowd."

"Yeah. You're still tranqued," Jerry sighed and wandered back out into the hallway. "Thought she was trying to talk to us, but she's just mumbling at no one. Couldn't hear well enough to tell from here."

"Kinda cute like that. Sad… but cute."

"Serious?"

"Not date cute… puppy cute!" Alex realized the connotation of the first thing he said.

"Okay, see that is exactly why you can't tell her you saw any of this."

"Yeah you're right," Alex agreed. "That would… not end well. Heaven forbid anyone see a part of her that might be sympathetic. It would tarnish her cutthroat reputation."

"Oh no she managed that just fine in court," Jerry replied. "Docile as a kitten for the judge."

"Kittens have claws."

"So does Robin. The point is you say _sym_ pathetic… she only _hears_ pathetic, and that isn't something she's going to tolerate."

"Fair enough. When are you off?"

"Technically I'm not scheduled today, I'm just sticking around till the sedation wears off. I _was_ thinking if she's crawling around like that she was probably coming out, but she's talking gibberish and not answering to her name soooooo…"

"So a while longer still."

"It would seem so," Jerry sighed.

"Okay well… I've got a group down on B, or I'd stay," Alex shrugged. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Jerry replied, and sighed, wandering back into the room. He sat down in the chair scooting it a little further away from the desk so he could sit without impinging on her space under the table.

"Dowana beeeeeeeer... "

"Good, cause you're not _getting_ a beer," he picked up his book and started to read again, trying to make light of her lack of coherency, even though she sounded fairly distressed. Root didn't acknowledge him. She had her face mashed sideways into the plushie come pillow under the blanket in front of her, and only seemed to move periodically to adjust her feet and press herself harder into the corner. She mumble whined at seemingly random intervals, with long pauses in between that gave Jerry the feeling she might be having a conversation with the voice… aided by sedation rather than a phone. He couldn't be sure.

"Wannagoooooooome...

"Donwana plyiss gamanymore. Canned maygme. Sssssssstupit gaymannywai…

"Noooooo…

"Snot fair… snever fair…

"Baaaad coooooooh code…

"Stupped game. Nomore… maggotsop…

"Baaaaaaaaaaaaaad…

"Wanmym- wanmyfooo…

"Stupitsam. Yewdongedda foo… nofooforyou… Foo-foo…

"Little bunny foo-foo hoppin thru the forest, picking up the field mice and boppin em on the head," Jerry mused aloud, "I'll bet the good fairy never came to tell you not to bop people on the head, did she."

"Noddafoo… noddafoo-foo… jusamuver…

"Nup nup nup nup… sokay… eurogay…

"Gimmedatnyfe… puddit doooown…

"Maaaaaa… eurogay… eurogay… samaseer.

"Nooooo….. nadda sam… dowana bezzam numor…

"Dowana bezzam. Dowana beeroh bin. Stupitrobn.

"Snot me… snot. Manamisrut."

"Did you just say your name is Groot?" Jerry looked up from the book, grinning. The question was rhetorical. He was aware that she wasn't reacting to anything that was being said. It just tickled him that he was fairly certain she'd just quoted Guardians of the Galaxy at him. Did she read comic books?

"Srooooot harald. Sroot."

"Rutdunneed nofu. Gaggeddout. Beirut…

"Gadagadagan… Beirut-bang-ang…

"Dawntaggabowt mamam… saggadmuver…

"Ssssgud enuff. Dunneednofoo…

"Jassneeda geddowd oveer...dunneednofooooooo…

"Wannafoo… **Shaddup**!"

Jerry jumped half a mile as Root's voice raised and she lurched under the desk, smacking her head against its bottom. He peeked under to see that she'd pushed off the floor and the side of the desk with her feet, as if to propel herself backwards, but in the space she was in it had only resulted in pushing her into the corner in the underside of the desk. Slowly she relaxed from there, sliding back down the underside of the desk, breathing deeply and heavily. He watched carefully, concerned about the sound… until it slowly turned to a light, almost purring snore.

"Robin?"

"Hmmmmmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"Mmhmmm…. Why?"

"Nevermind… go back to sleep. It's fine."

"Kaaaaaay…"

 

* * *

 

Hours and hours later, Root woke, and immediately hit her head on the underside of the desk again, glaring at it, then at her legs, and the blanket trailing from the bed. It was dark, sometime past lights out and the desk chair was adjacent to the desk, clearly moved to make it easier for the techs to see her during checks. She crawled out from under the desk, bringing the panther with her, and standing to pull the phone out from under her pillow, but it was of no help in determining the time as the battery being drained. It had to be well past midnight already for that to have happened. Had the haldol knocked her on her ass for that long? Or did she just wind up sleeping even after it had worn off?

She flopped onto the bed listlessly, feeling as if she'd been on a bender. ' _Just_ haldol' indeed. It would appear that even ' _just_ haldol' has some decidedly unpleasant side effects. At least, by comparison, it wasn't as bad as the withdrawal she'd just been through. She considered going to the nurses station to get the other battery, but as far as the machine knew she was still asleep, and she didn't feel like talking to Her right now. Root was cross with Her for this whole situation and was fairly certain that if she had the opportunity she was liable to say something that would deeply offend Her, and then she could be stuck here forever. She put the phone back under the pillow.

Rubbing at her shoulder, Root wondered for a while how she wound up under the desk. Based on the way the blanket was draped it was pretty clear she'd gone there under her own power and there was no reason for any of the staff to _put_ her under there, she just couldn't think of _why_ she would go under there in the first place. Now she was sore and stiff from squeezing in there like that.

"Hate you," she muttered to no one in particular. "Go play in traffic. You're not my friend anyway."

She rolled over swiftly, kneeling on the bed and holding the panther by the neck with both hands on the bed in front of her, wringing it's stupid stuffed neck. One of the things she always enjoyed about these dolls was that the way their faces are designed they always looked stunned and slightly overwhelmed… and if you squeezed them tightly around the neck, their straight-line mouths curved down into a dismayed frown. Durable too. Could twist them hard. They would only go about 120 degrees before their fat little necks would go no further, but they never tore. The panther looked back up at her with it's one good eye, helpless and unable to breath… well… it was inanimate. It didn't need to breath, but the effect was calming nonetheless. People always used to say that punching a pillow was a good way to blow off steam, but a pillow didn't have a face.

"Robin?" the door was open behind her. Root sat back on her heels and turned her head to face the sound. "Oh-I- oh…" It was clear from Mary's behavior that she'd seen Root leaned forward on her knees with both arms working down low in front, and come to the wrong conclusion.

"Relax Mary," Root raised her eyebrows. "I was just beating the snot out of my pillow. That's supposed to be a good thing right? Healthy coping?"

"Oh," Mary exhaled, "I thought- you know what I thought. Uh… hold that thought actually, I'm supposed to let Arina know when you're awake. She's gotta do a post sedation checkup."

"What time is it?"

"3:20 in the morning… but we're supposed to do it ASAP when someone's up from sedation."

Mary disappeared back out the door, and Root took that opportunity to put the panther under her pillow still hoping to hide it and, experimentally, drew her hand up her thigh and body, caressing herself, fruitlessly. Mary's incorrect supposition jogged her mind and she realized belatedly that she hadn't even thought of this sort of thing the whole time she'd been here. Side effects of the benzodiazepines she supposed, and she was hopeful that it was wearing off. Disappointingly there was still no reaction even when she pinched and thumbed her nipple... but half a second after she stopped, _then_ a sensation rolled down her spine, clenching low in her belly, before dissipating.  Root hummed self satisfactorily and took it no further, knowing that Arina and Mary would be there soon. It was enough to know that the possibility was returning. She turned and sat back against the headboard instead, legs crossed and fingers entwined, hands in her lap, expectantly.

Arina arrived shortly and after asking permission to turn on the light, ran a quick exam, vitals and neuro. Everything checked out, to the surprise of absolutely no one, and Arina produced a pill cup and a small pink pill.

"Are you serious?" Root asked, incredulous. " _More_ meds?"

"Is Benadryl," Arina replied curtly. "It help with the side effects. Also it will make you leetle bit drowsy again. Maybe you sleep to morning… but mostly is for side effects. Everyone get Benadryl after Haldol."

Root grudgingly took the pill, and automatically opened her mouth, showing it hadn't been cheeked. It had become second nature at this point. She didn't like that. Institutionalized.

"You lay down now," Arina said, bending to pick up the blanket off the floor. "Try to go back to sleep."

"I might," Root yawned. "I might not. That's still my choice, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Arina replied somewhat patronizingly,  as she left. It seemed to her that 'Robin' was being contradictory, just for the sake of being contradictory… and she wasn't wrong. Root had, by her own metric, been _incredibly_ well behaved since the pen incident, and it hadn't helped her one bit. She hadn't gotten _one_ thing she wanted out of the scenario. Instead they'd tightened the noose and here she was, having lost the last scrap of control she had over her own fate… but not over everything.

Alone in the room, Root sighed and glanced at her reflection in the darkened window. She looked a mess, hair still half up, and button down shirt creased and rumpled. Her eyes trailed down from there to the desk. She'd finished her knapsack heuristic the week prior and stuffed it in the bottom drawer of the desk, functions alternating at right angles to one another. Now she was working on a decision making algorithm that would ostensibly take everyday lay speak and translate it into a pastiche of psychologist speak, her own little personal in joke. The haldol hangover had her fuzzy, so she didn't feel like working on that now… but she didn't want to sleep either. That's what they wanted her to do, and the only thing she was sure of at the moment was that she was sick of doing what they wanted her to do.

"Not my friend, never were," she muttered, almost unaware of the words leaving her mouth, slowly pacing the room. "Don't like you. I hope you die."

Frustrated, and bristling inside, she found herself in the bathroom, at the sink where she  pulled down her hair, running her brush through it for longer than was strictly necessary to get it sorted out again. She never really bothered to analyze it before, but standing there, in the semi-dark (she hadn't bothered to turn on the bathroom light) she became somewhat cognizant that this action was a deliberate attempt at self soothing, and turned her attention, deliberately savoring the scrape of the bristles on her scalp and the slight tug on her hair as the brush ran down the strands. She briefly wished that the toilet had a lid she could sit on, but it didn't so when she was tired of standing, she put the brush down and wandered back into the room, flicking off the now somewhat oppressive light.

After a few rounds of the room she opened her door into the darkened hallway. Strictly speaking there was nothing they could do to keep anyone in their rooms at night. All they could manage was to lock the day room, and all the group rooms, so that they only places accessible were the hallways, and the area down by the nursing station and seclusion rooms, and hope people were too bored by them to bother coming out of their room at night. Tonight… she didn't feel like giving them that. Tonight she would make the checks techs earn their keep. How about a little game of 'Where's Robin?'

 

* * *

 

"You can't sleep here anymore Robin," Mary was looming above her. Root wasn't sure when she fell asleep but apparently some time during her roaming the hallways, she had elected to rest on the rug in front of the nurses station window and fallen asleep. Must have been the Benadryl. "It's going to be morning meds soon. You need to move."

"Make me," Root giggled, still half asleep, but pleased to awaken to discover she was being a nuisance.

"Just… move to the side some, eh?" Mary asked.

"Nope."

"Robin, if you don't move we're going to have to move you," Mary sighed, "Do you really want to be carried?"

"I'd rather not," Root replied, rolling onto her back, and lacing her fingers behind her head as a makeshift pillow, "someone might get hurt." She pouted theatrically, offsetting the implicated threat.

"Do I need to get Arina over here? You know she's not going to have any patience for this."

"And what is Arina going to do?" Root replied, smirking. "Nothing. There's nothing either of you can do."

"Why Robin?" Mary sighed, sitting down in one of the hallway chairs. "What's the point of this?"

"What's the point in anything?" Root replied, with a gesture that might have been a shrug if she wasn't lying on her back.

"I don't have the energy for existentialism at this time in the morning," Mary yawned. "I'm supposed to be off in like, 15 minutes."

"Then in 15 minutes I'll be someone else's problem," Root smiled. "Isn't that something to look forward to at least?"

"What the hell is going on Robin? You're acting irrational… and we both know you're not an irrational person. What brought this on all the sudden? What's changed?"

"Oh but I **am** . Nothing's changed," Root laughed, mirthlessly. "I **am** an irrational person. Just ask Dr. Jennings and Judge Creepface."

"Oh… so we're having a pity party over our petition now are we?" Mary shook her head, and stood from her chair. "You… go ahead and wallow then. See how much better that makes things for you." She sighed and went around into the nurse's station, to start setting out the little paper cuts that Elena would dole the medicines into when she came on at 7am.

"You mistake my intent," Root replied, with a sly smile. "I _can't_ make things any better for myself… but I _can_ make them worse for you."

"You do that Robin," Mary didn't look up, continuing to methodically set out the cups on taped out cafeteria trays each box bearing a name on the masking tape at the bottom of the row, the easier to find the right cup for the right patient.

"Morning Mary," Gloria trundled into the nurse's station, locking her purse in the front desk. "Anything interesting last night?"

"Just Robin being a deliberate nuisance," Mary replied. "Woke up from her long-nap at half past three and wouldn't stay in bed. Wandering all over the halls. Round five the Benadryl got the better of her and she fell asleep down there on the floor. Of course _now_ she won't get up."

"Down where?"

"Right there," Mary pointed, her line of indication running through the wall of the nurses station under the window, as she'd moved back from it enough that she could no longer directly see Root.

"Ain't no Robin here," Gloria said, peering out the window.

"What?" Mary moved to the front of the nurses station, half hanging out the window to look where 'Robin' had disappeared to. Somewhere in the distance, a door latch quietly clicked, and Mary rolled her eyes. "You hear that? She went back to her room while I wasn't looking. I swear she was there. I'm not seeing things. I'm not."

"Oh relax Mary… if you weigh the likelihood that you're having sleep deprivation hallucinations against the likelihood that Robin's screwing around with you… you know where the probabilities lay, and so do I."

"Right… of course," Mary laughed nervously. "It's been a long night… well… since half past three."

"Go… you're off in 5 anyway. Get a coffee and get some sleep… and I'll see you at 7pm."

"Thanks Gloria," Mary smiled, and hurried out of the nursing station. Gloria made a note to have another haldol-only tranq syringe drawn up to carry today, just in case.


	30. Rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root has no incentive to cooperate...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another huge round of thanks for Madlaw for the realism checks. I would not be able to get a lot of details right if I didn't have someone smarter than me about these things to check with when I'm not sure. :D

"If you're not going to go to group Robin, you need to go back to your room. You know the rules," Gloria said, looking more than slightly put out. "They day room is only for people who don't have a group right now, or who have permission to be in here."

"I'm not Justine, Gloria," Root replied looking up from the magazine she was thumbing thru. "You don't intimidate me, and I _know_ you can't actually enforce that rule. Well… other than making little notes in your little clipboards, but you're going to do that anyway."

"You're just determined to be everywhere you're not supposed to be today, aren't you," Gloria sighed.

"Ohhh… it's so much more than that," Root leaned sideways, tossing her head with it, and catching Gloria's eyes out of the corner of her own, as she smiled.

"Oh really? What more is it?" Gloria asked, challengingly.

"That's for me to know, and you to find out," Root giggled, and pulled her feet up off the floor to it cross legged on the couch. Gloria shook her head and wandered back out of the room, leaving Root to her own devices without any further argument, which was a disappointing turn of events. Root frowned and picked up the television remote, deliberately tuning it to the History channel, and jacking up the volume continually, until Lewis was sent to handle the situation.

"That is too loud Robin… and… yeah you're not allowed to watch that."

"Both true statements," she replied, but took no action to fix it.

"Turn it down and change the channel."

"No," she replied, as casually as if she'd been asked if she minded if someone sat next to her on a bus.

"I'm serious Robin. Change the channel and lower the volume."

"No."

"You're not even supposed to be watching TV when you're meant to be in group," he grumbled, reaching for one of the other remotes.

The three remotes and three TVs were all intercompatible, which often accidentally lead to circumstances just like the one Root was engineering here. Unfortunately the hoped for battle of the remotes was cut remarkably short when Lewis resorted to unplugging the television.

"What is your malfunction?!?" he demanded at that point, with no small amount of hostility.

"I'm a crazy person?" Root replied, with a smirk.

"You know what I mean Robin. What the hell is wrong with you today, that isn't _usually_ wrong with you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she shrugged. "I'm just clearly unhinged is all."

Lewis rolled his eyes and stormed back off, leaving her alone again. When she tried it again with the second television, he didn't even bother engaging in the remote battle, but simply unplugged it, and the third one preemptively, and left without a word putting an abrupt end to any such games.

After a cursory check showed that he'd locked the cords into the enclosure that kept the televisions from being lifted off the table, so she would not be able to plug them back in, Root started pacing slow circles of the room, seeking something else to amuse herself with. Her eyes alighted on a tin of 'stress putty' left on one of the tables, and a grin spread across her face.

 

* * *

 

"Oh my god," Lawrence stood at the doorway to the day room, disbelievingly. "I'm not sure if I should be angry or impressed… but this… this is not safe."

He slowly circled the table upon which Root had managed to precariously stack six of the chairs in a pyramid. Firstly they weren't exactly light. Secondly the bottom row had a sled leg hanging off on either side, cantilevered by the seats of the second row to prevent them from falling off, which he wouldn't think could even be _done_ by one person working alone if he wasn't certain that no one but 'Robin' had been left in the day room. Thirdly, she had managed to do it quickly and quietly enough that no one had noticed and stopped her midway.

"How did you even do this?" he asked her, with a touch of awe.

"Are you sure that it was me?"  She replied, innocently. In all truth it had taken no small effort to pull off the feat. The hour or so beforehand when she had  appeared to have finally decided to stop being a nuisance was time spend on in deep consideration: estimation on the weights of the chairs, calculations on placement and weight offset. When they moved them they'd find, if they looked, crayon marked guides for the placement of the bottom three chairs, but they were entirely unlikely to notice the two other chairs that had been involved in the early stages of construction and then put right back where they belonged. The top chair was just the cherry on the pie, no calculations required, plopped there on top center of the more complex construction below.

"Who else could it be?"

"Theeeeey're heeeeeeere," Root replied, looking up from her magazine, which she wasn't so much reading as making a show of pretending to read."Poltergeist Robin? Really?" he shook his head, and wandered into the hall. "Can I get another pair of hands… actually another two pairs of hands? I need to get some stacked furniture down."

"Stacked furniture?" she could hear Lewis in the hall.

"There's no other way to describe this… but I'm pretty sure we need more hands… Danny! Can we borrow you?"

The three wandered back into the day room to behold the sight. Danny tilted his head as puzzled as Lawrence was in trying to piece together how the chairs had even been stacked like that in the first place. Lewis just shook his head and rolled his eyes in frustration, and shot a withering glare at Root who had turned in her seat on the couch, resting her chin on her folded arms on the back of the sofa, preparing to watch what promised to be an amusing spectacle either fraught with quite a bit of maneuvering… or a spectacular crash.

"Enjoying the show?" Lewis spat, sarcastically, after a solid five minutes of maneuvering without managing to get a single chair off. Each attempt stopped when it appeared it would destabilize the whole pile.

"Yes," Root grinned broadly.

"Look… tell us how you got these up here so we can reverse it," he demanded.

"No."

"This is a waste of our time," Lewis muttered.

"Have you got a better idea?" Lawrence asked.

"Yeah. I do, get behind me."

Lawrence looked at him incredulously, and Danny backed up so far he was on the other side or Root and the couch. She caught onto what Lewis' idea was and hopped over the back of the couch positioning herself opposite from Lewis across the table.

"Get out of the way Robin," he barked.

"No."

"Why are you saying no to everything?!?! Are you a toddler?"

"I highly doubt a toddler could have managed this," she replied, gesturing vaguely toward the chairs.

"Sooner or later you're going to have to go to the bathroom," Lewis replied, "and I'm going to get these chairs down."

"Have you asked yourself why it's so important that the chairs be on the floor, Lewis?" Root asked, in mockery of the tone the group leads and psychiatrists tended to use. "Maybe the problem isn't in the chairs at all."

"This is ridiculous Robin, even for you," Lewis spat back. "You're being a total pain and you're doing it on purpose. What the hell is wrong with you?!?"

"Don't antagonize her," Danny cautioned.

"That's not going to help," Lawrence agreed. "And I think I get the drift that you were just going to push them over but there's not enough space in here for you to do that without breaking the bookshelf… unless you were standing on the other side." Unless he was standing right where Root was standing.

She grinned and leaned forward, grasping the legs of the middle chair.

"Robin," Danny said warningly. "Stacking chairs is being a pain in the rear, and admittedly a little funny. Pushing them onto Lewis is _danger to self or others_."

"I would never," she replied, smiling a smile that said quite the contrary, but none the less she released the chair and stepped back. Lewis came around the side Root stood on and stood as close as he dared, trying to use invasion of personal space to move her out of position.

"Get behind me Robin," he insisted.

Root looked like she was considering it.

"You're going to get behind me, and stay behind me, so I can get these chairs down. Now Robin."

"Suit yourself," she replied smugly, stepping out and around. Lewis shoved the chairs off the table unceremoniously, with a loud crash that caused Francis, Oliver and Gloria to come running.

"Robin!" Gloria exclaimed.

"Don't look at me. That was Lewis."

"Lewis?" Gloria questioned, as if to ask 'is this true?'

"She put them up there, I was just getting them down," Lewis grunted.

"I still haven't conceded to that," Root replied glibly.

"She's blaming poltergeists," Lawrence said.

"Stay away from the light Carol Anne!"

"Robin," Danny said disappointedly.

"Yeah, I stacked the chairs," Root said with feigned sheepishness. "It's a constructive activity… or it was… until someone decided to be destructive instead." She pouted at Lewis.

"It's an unsafe activity. You have been warned," Gloria replied, before leaving, the three techs to right the chairs and put them back at the tables.

"I'm supposed to be on checks," Danny said, excusing himself after righting only one chair. Lawrence righted three while Lewis slowly, irritably righted two, and then stormed off back to the nurses station. Only noticing that Root followed him when he went to sit down at the desk.

"Get out of the nurses station Robin," Lewis hissed.

"I distinctly recall you instructing me to get behind you and _stay_ behind you," Root replied.

"What is it with you and being places you oughtn't today?" Gloria looked up from her charting.

"I'm exactly where I ought. I'm behind Lewis."

"Get out of the nurses station Lewis," Gloria instructed.

"Are you serious?"

"Out."

Lewis grumbled and complied with the direction. Gloria was the charge nurse and that meant she was in charge, and if that's how she wanted to handle this…

"Where do you think you're going Lewis?" she asked from the doorway when he was about 10 feet from the door.

"Out of the nurses station," he replied sullenly.

"Get back in here," she ordered.

"The hell?"

"Now Lewis," she disappeared inside again, confusing and frustrating Lewis and causing Root to furrow her brow in amused curiosity.  With a huff he complied, heading back to where he'd just come from, jumping suddenly at the loud clap that heralded his return to the nurses station, followed by a dull thud, as Root walked into the now closed door.

"I will never question you again," Lewis said, relieved, realizing that Gloria had used 'Robin's own little game to extract her from the nurses station, and then prevented her return with a timely shutting of the door.

"Ow!" she whined dramatically, "You've broken my nose!!!"

"Well then you had better check in with Rhetta," Gloria replied flatly, aware that there was pretty much no way the impact she heard had broken 'Robin's nose. She had a full step and a half to slow and turn her head before hitting the door. "And I'm going to remind you of that later," she added to Lewis.

 

* * *

 

"What are you **doing** Robin?!?!?" Oliver exclaimed, entering the day room after lunch. While they had all been otherwise occupied she had located an extra wide sharpie marker and quietly pulled a chair over to one of the the two day room walls without windows, and was writing out a series of ones and zeros that had reached at this point to nearly six rows across the wall.

As he hurried into the room, he noted that she'd already filled the other windowless wall with what was either alphanumeric gibberish, or math far beyond his capabilities, starting quite near the top and ending near the top of the couch pushed against it.

  
[(Source)](http://thatmathblog.tumblr.com/post/30353289683/this-equation-generates-a-graphical-fuck-you)

"It's called writing on walls Oliver , not that hard a concept to understand," she replied, as if the inquiry had been literally sincere.

"Give me the marker," he approached the chair she was standing on. "Now Robin."

"No," she replied, barely stopping her work.

"Give me the marker!"

She didn't respond this time, except for a self satisfied smile, continuing her series of ones and zeros. Oliver moved around to her right side and reached up after the marker.

"Tsk. Tsk. Not allowed to touch me," Root replied, waggling a finger at him with her left hand while holding the marker over her head with the right, well out of his grasp, as she was about the same height as him, and had the advantage of standing on a chair.

_01010010 01101111 01100010 01101001 01101110 00100111 01110011 00100000 01010011 01001000 01001001 01010100 01001100_  
01001001 01010011 _01010100 00111010 00001010 00101101 00100000 01000100 01110010 00101110 0010000001010010 01101111_  
01101110 01100001 01101100 01100100 _00100000 01000011 01101000 01100001 01110010 01101101 01101001 01100011 01101000_  
01100001 01100101 01101100 00001010 00101101 00100000 _01000100 01110010 00101110 00100000 01000111 01110010 01100101_  
01100111 01101111 01110010 01111001 00100000 01001010 01100101 01101110 _01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 01110011  
00001010 00101101 0010000001000001 01101110 01100100 01110010 01100101 01110111 00100000 _ _01001101 01100001_

"This is ridiculous. Stop writing on the walls and give me the marker."

"What the…"

"Francis would you do me a favor and take the rest of the markers to the nurses station. So she can't get another one once I get this one?"

"Oh and it's sharpie too," Francis almost whined. "It's gonna smell like rubbing alcohol for days in here once they get it off."

"Robin you need to come down off the chair. Furniture is for sitting on, not standing on. This isn't safe," Oliver started taking a different tack. "If you cannot stop standing on the furniture we are going to have to remove and sedate you for your own safety."

Root sighed and rolled her eyes, but came down off the chair anyway, putting up only a token protest when Oliver snatched the marker out of her hand, and immediately climbed on a table to sit. Oliver shook his head, satisfied now that he had the marker, and feeling that sitting on tables wasn't nearly as dangerous as standing on chairs, so he let her be and went to pass the last marker to Elana through the window.

 

* * *

 

"She seems pretty calm to me," Terry shrugged, looking over the shoulder of the assembled.

"You've been doing groups all day, you haven't had to deal with this," Lewis replied. "Trust me she's out of control."

"Well Terry is right at the moment, she's just sat there at a table… quite like," Francis mused. "Almost… too quiet…" he furrowed his brow. "Last time she was that quiet she was defacing the walls… but we took the markers… you fill in Terry. I'm going to go check…"

He broke away from the other two and crossed the day room, approaching Root from an angle. He didn't want to be seen right away, but he didn't want to come right up behind someone like 'Robin.' That seemed like a good way to get hurt. As he neared, he could see her sat there, humming softly to herself as she slowly and methodically tore the pages of a large soft bound copy of '7 Habits of Highly Effective People." One page top left to bottom right, and the next bottom left to top right, creating triangular pieces of paper.

"Robin!" he chastised. "Stop that!"

Root looked up at him, a small smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth, and tore out another page. He closed the distance and reached out toward her, only to be met by a finger held up as if to indicate he should wait.

"Don't touch meeee," Root sing-songed and, after a moment, resumed her tearing.

"That's not your book Robin. It's here for everyone," Francis sighed. "You need to stop tearing it. Please."

"Hmmm…" Root cocked her head thoughtfully for a moment. "No," she pulled out another page.

"Robin stop," he tried to be firm but it wasn't working. Seeing no other way to rescue the book… even though it was nearly half disposed of, he reached out and grabbed it by the top. Root countered by grabbing it from the bottom edge, and the two found themselves engaged in a tug of war. "Let go Robin," he ordered, through gritted teeth. Her only reply was to curl her lips under in exertion, pulling back on the book with all her strength. "Robin, let go," he asked again, punctuating the last word with a yank, but the book did not come loose. "Let it g-AAAH!!!"

Correctly predicting another yank, Root let her end of the book go just as Francis pulled harder, causing him to overbalance and land firmly on his ass with a yelp. Root suppressed a huge grin into a crooked smile and stood up, approaching the bookshelf to select another tome to dismember, before sitting back down, and resuming her work.

"Terry, would you help me move the rest of these books to the nursing station," Francis sighed.

 

* * *

 

"You missed an announcement at dinner," Roger said, coming up on Root where she was nearly done destroying the copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul she'd picked up to replace the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. "What are you doing?"

She looked back up at him like he had seven heads.

"Okay I know what you're doing, but why?" Roger rephrased.

"Oh my god," Lauren arrived at the scene eyes wide as dinner plates observing the destruction that sat before her. "Oh… no no no…"

"Oh crap," Root hadn't anticipated that dismembering books would be a trigger for Lauren, if it was done neatly. She slammed the book shut and grabbed all the dismembered pages, shoving them onto the shelf behind the boardgames trying to get them out of her friend's sight, the conversation with Roger temporarily on hold. It took a few minutes to calm Lauren, but when the three were again seated, Roger defaulted back to his original statement.

"Just so you know, at dinner they made an announcement that everyone who wants to use the hall bath has to leave the door open a crack and have supervision, like the ED girls. Apparently someone stopped up the sink with stress putty and flooded the bathroom and they don't know who- you didn't."

Root grinned.

"You did."

"I'll tell Gloria before she leaves. The point wasn't to get everyone else into trouble."

"What's with you today? You skipped all your groups to scribble on the walls, flooded the bathroom and then… that…" he refrained from describing it and just gestured at the shelf where the book was hiding.

"I don't know," Root shrugged. "I guess… I'm just too crazy to safely function outside a structured environment with constant supervision."

"Seriously?" Roger shook his head. " **You're** resorting to the old, treat me like a crazy person and I'll act like a crazy person gambit? I thought you were smarter than that."

"I don't think it's a matter of intelligence," Root replied flipply. "It's a matter of goals. It would be a stupid move for a lot of goals… but not for mine."

"If any of your goals is to get out of here ever, then it really is," Lauren said.

"I don't think that's going to happen," she punctuated the statement with a twitch of her nose.

"Sunday you were positive you were getting out," Roger replied.

"And I was wrong. All that work was for absolutely nothing. No point in wasting effort on trying to convince anyone to let me out."

"So you've given up," Roger retorted, tone suggesting that the idea was disdainful to him. "You've decided to become another Andrew and just rot here and never get any better."

"I guess that's one way to look at it."

"You come and find me then when you decide otherwise. I'm out." Roger stood and walked out of the day room, presumably back to his own room. Lauren looked at her lap for a while, and then got up, uncomfortably and went to go sit next to Tina on the couch watching TV. Root huffed and tried very hard to remind herself that she didn't care what anyone else thought of her.

 

* * *

 

"I can't find Robin," Tom walked up to the nurses station, confused.

"What do you mean you can't find Robin?" Mary asked, looking up from the computer.

"I mean exactly what I said. I've checked all the bedrooms, all the room bathrooms, and the hall bath and I can't find her."

"Do you think she got out?" Nora said, pausing in her knitting.

"I don't think so… the last few checks she was, behind her door, behind her bathroom door, and in the wardrobe. I think she just found a better hiding place."

"Maybe she moved from one room to one you already checked…" Mary suggested getting up. "Let's do another round. You stand in the hallway and watch in case she tries to change rooms."

It seemed reasonable enough so the two tried it… but no Robin.

"Are we sure all the therapy rooms are locked?" Mary asked. "Maybe she taped a door?"

"Well they get locked right after fourth block," Tom replied. "Except the art room which doesn't close till dinner… but she spent dinner time tearing up books in the day room. When would she have been able to do that?"

"You have any better ideas?" Mary replied. They started with the art room, since it locks the latest… but no Robin. Next the movement room, where she could get into the most trouble with hand weights, resistance bands, hula hoops, ribbon dancers etc. No Robin. Then one by one they went through the other therapy rooms, mostly interchangeable in contents, until in the large activity room, there she was, sitting on a chair looking less bored than she really should have been after all that time.

"You're 28 minutes overdue," she said.

"Out," Tom replied, pointing to the hallway.

"You really should be more vigilant about locking the doors," she chidded with a smile she was trying to turn down into a frown.

"Let's go back to your room Robin," Mary said, a bit less harshly, and accompanied Root to her door… which should have been the end of it… but it wasn't.

She was there for next checks, but the checks after that, she was gone again, only to be found in a different therapy room this time sitting under a table, so they didn't find her until the second sweep. Then in her room at the checks after she was found, then in the movement room, behind the stack of gym mats. At that point they searched her, looking for sharps. Anything that could pick a lock would be small and narrow enough to be a hazard. But they found nothing, and 'Robin' only giggled more the more frustrated they got. The last time they found her in a cabinet in the art room, at which point, rather than submit to another search, she smirkingly handed over the long distance calling card she'd been jimmying the doors with.

 

* * *

 

"Ask me no more questions, I'll tell you no more lies. The boys are in the girls’ room, pulling down their- Flies are in the kitchen. Bees are in the park. 14 boys and 14 girls are kissing in the da-"

Root fell silent at the sound of footfall in the hallway, closing her eyes and mouth, and falling still before the door to her room opened.

"You need to stop the chanting Robin," Tom was in the doorway.

"Hmmm?" she feigned being woken from sleep.

"You're not fooling anyone, I know it was you, and I want it to stop. You're keeping your neighbors up again."

"I was asleep," she replied.

"Well then it should still be silent in here when I leave," he replied, closing the door behind himself. He stood in the hallway outside the door, trying to catch her in the act.

This little game had been going on for the better part of two hours. First with irregular knocking that made him wonder if it was happening at all, and then with more and more blatant sounds, which always stopped as soon as the door opened, and always resumed only when he was too far down the hall to catch her in the act. No matter how lightly he stepped… even taking off his shoes to walk sock footed with no flashlight he still couldn't sneak up on her, or convince her he'd gone from the door when he hadn't.

It was _infuriating_.  Nora couldn't be convinced to tranquilize 'Robin' so long as her volume remained within socially acceptable constraints, despite the fact that even one's indoor voice was too loud for the nighttime, and Mary not only seemed to think it was funny but had gotten "The Song that Gets on Everybody's Nerves" stuck in her head and kept humming it unintentionally.

He sighed, and tried to sneak away from the door quietly enough that she might think he was still there… but when he was two doors down the hall:

"Dark is like a movie, a movie's like a show-"

"SHUT UP!"

"Tom!" Nora could be heard at the nurses station even if she couldn't be seen immediately as she wasn't at the window. She came into view shortly after with a look in her face that made it very clear that she was disappointed in him for losing his cool.

"Let it go," she stage whispered. "You're just winding her up."

 

* * *

 

"Robin _Elizabeth_ Farrow!" Gloria had wondered why the patient was sitting in the hallway chairs instead of eating breakfast with everyone else. Apparently she had been waiting for an opportunity to chuck the entire contents of a half ounce container of purple glitter in through the nurses station window.

Root giggled more than she would otherwise have, due to the inclusion of her fictitious middle name. It somehow made the falseness of the name all the more start to her in that it had nowhere near the same gravitas as Samantha _Marie_ Groves. Giving up the calling card had been the absolute best play. Satisfied with figuring out how she'd been getting into the rooms, they never thought to consider what she could have stolen from the art room. They'd be finding that glitter in things for months.

"You will go where you are supposed to be, or you will go to your room, or so help me Robin I will have to tranquilize you. You cannot keep disrupting the function of the unit like this!"

Root screwed the lid back onto the glitter container and placed it daintily on the window ledge, and went down the hall back to her room slamming her door behind her. All was quiet for a few minutes after that… until her door opened again, and her chair was pushed into the hallway. This was followed by a protracted silence… and then a loud thud and a strangled grunt.

"What the hell was that?" Lawrence peered back down the hallway, coming back the nurses station after supervising breakfast.

"That would be the sound of Robin discovering that all of her furniture is bolted to the floor," Gloria said, as if it were unremarkable… because it was. Root certainly wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last patient to get it into their head to shift the furniture in some dangerous manner. They were bolted down for a reason.

"This has got to stop," Lawrence shook his head in disbelief, as Root's bare mattress slid into the hallway.

"Leave it," Gloria said, gathering papers. "Last checks say Alana, Lilly and Ryan are the only ones besides her who didn't go to breakfast, and none of them have to go past her room to get to goals group. If they're still in the hall when we're done with that, we'll see how she likes making do without a chair and a mattress until lights out, since she clearly doesn't want them in her room. C'mon Lawrence."

 

* * *

 

"Can you help? We can't get her down," Francis huffed. "We were going to try and remove her, but she's implied pretty clearly that the moment someone lays a hand on her she's going to faceplant on the floor, and blame us for knocking her down."

Jerry peered around the doorframe to see what they were talking about, and there was Root propped up on the top of the wardrobe he knew not how. The top was angled 30 degrees to prevent patients from hiding anything on top of it… which should have stopped her from getting up there, but somehow she'd managed to perch so that the rubbers of her shoes provided enough friction for her to remain there, without sliding off.

"Thought maybe you'd have better luck," Lawrence added defeatedly. "Considering she likes you so much." He wandered off frustrated down the hallway.

"Did she say why she's up there?"

"Didn't ask," Francis sighed, "She's been making a nuisance out of herself since yesterday morning. Hasn't been to group either."

"Alright, I'll give it a go," Jerry sighed, and walked into the middle of Root's room, looking up. "Robin, we need you to come down from there please."

"Sent in the big guns, have they?" Root taunted. "Sorry Jerry. I don't think I really feel like coming down right now. I rather like it up here."

"What's the point of all this disruption Robin, really?"

"Disruption," she replied, with a shrug.

"Disruption for the sake of disruption… that's not very like you," he replied suspiciously.

"Revenge?" she offered. "If you get to make my life a living hell, why not return the favor?"

"You want to do that to me?" Jerry sounded hurt, but Root was pretty sure at least some of it was a put on.

"Not you in particular," Root replied, placatingly. "It's not personal. It's the whole staff."

"Well I in particular am asking you to come down from there," Jerry sighed. "Can you do me that favor? Personally?"

"That's not a favor you want," Root replied. "I do this for you, after Monday? You're going to get called to the scene every single time I cause a nuisance. Do you really want to be the go-to guy for all problems Robin related?"

"If it means you'll cooperate with me, then I'm okay with that," Jerry replied.

"Trust me," Root replied. "I'm doing you a favor."

"What's the endgame here?" Jerry asked. "We both know you can't stay up there forever. What's the best outcome for you right now."

"I can't stay up here forever, but I can stay up here until I actually have a reason to come down… use the bathroom or some such."

"The goal is to come down on your own terms then, instead of ours," Jerry surmised. "We can play it that way if you want to Robin, but you have to name your terms before we can negotiate anything."

Root considered his words. On the one hand she was pretty sure she wanted to be as much work as possible, but on the other hand, coming up with sufficiently onerous terms could be an acceptable substitute to continuing coming up with new ways to make a nuisance indefinitely.

"Well for starters-"

"Get out Jerry," a familiar and undesirable voice said from the hallway.

"Dr. Carmichael," Root grimaced as he entered. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

He stood there with a tight lipped scowl, tapping a clipboard on the side on a closed fist.

"Jerry. Out." He repeated, and with a look that clearly said 'I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do," the tech left the room.

"You were up all night last night… you've been standing on chairs, building dangerous furniture piles… and now you're up on top of the wardrobe. Do you know what all of that tells me?"

"No. Enlighten me," Root replied, disdainfully.

"It tells me that you are currently a hazard to your own safety," his eyes softened and a small true smile slipped onto his face. "We're going to need to place you in seclusion until we can work out a way for you to be safe."

"And how do you propose to-" she stopped short, as Lawrence and Oliver slid her mattress back into the room, positioning longways in front of the wardrobe. "No. You wouldn't…."

They would. Francis arrived and the four advanced on her position, Lawrence and Francis each taking a foot, and Oliver and Ronald an arm, and they pulled her forward and off the wardrobe fumbling somewhat but in the end landing her on her ass on the mattress below at a low enough velocity to avoid injury.  

"Robin, this is your one and only chance to cooperate," Dr. Carmichael said. "Are you going to walk to seclusion or will it be necessary to carry you?"

Spitting in his face was probably a bad idea.


	31. Cargo Cult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root finally begins to comprehend what The Machine is trying to do...

"I'm starting to think putting Robin in seclusion was the wrong call," Francis sat down at the breakroom table, testing the waters.

"After what Dr. Carmichael did with it last time, it will never be a good idea for her," Jerry said between bites of his PBJ. "Besides which, she wasn't in any danger. I mean, liability wise we definitely had to get her down off the wardrobe but… I was really close to talking her down." He sighed to himself. "Why, what are you hearing? Did they have to use the Haldol?"

"No," Francis replied. "She quit beating up the walls when Dr. Carmichael threatened to move her to Seclusion B if she didn't knock it off." Instead of a matt bed in the corner, seclusion B had a restraint bed in the middle of the room. "I mean he can't actually do that till after they try wrist restraints and sedation but-"

"Would you really put it past him at this point?"

"Okay what are you talking about?" Francis scowled. "People keep saying stuff like that and I'm starting to feel like there's something going on around here I don't know."

"Oh… you didn't know? Okay you did _not_ hear this from me, okay?"

"Okaaaaaay," Francis replied suspiciously.

"Okay, remember back at the end of May, like a week after she got here, when she tried to stab Dr. Carmichael with a pen?"

"I think everyone remembers that."

"Yeah, but what most people don't know is that just _before_ that point he'd had her in seclusion for 28 hours, for basically _no_ good reason. There was some excuse about therapeutic value or something, but she wasn't a danger to anyone at the time. She didn't go homicidal on him till _after_ that, plus she somehow didn't get her night meds. And the scary thing is no one would have even known about it if she hadn't tried to kill him. That's when they looked into it and found out. Who knows how many other times he's done that to someone? It's not like they can go and ask each of his patients. That's just begging for one of them to find out they weren't the only one and stage a lawsuit.

"That's why George and Peter from second shift were transferred to separate units, they're the ones he called in to put her in, and the ones who told the nurses he'd ordered them to skip her meds that night. He still says he didn't tell them to do that, but either way I guess they figure they need to make sure he doesn't have access to techs that are willing to go along with well… _abuse_ like that. I mean I'm pretty sure there are some other people who had to turn a blind eye for that to work… but no one will ever prove it."

"Who?"

"They're still here, I'm not going to say… the point is, to Robin, saying he's willing to go overkill on restraint is a very credible threat," he sighed. "She's got every reason to think he can order her strapped to that bed for a week, just because he feels like it and we'd do it."

"That is… that explains so much actually," Francis replied with consideration, she'd transformed pretty much overnight from a hermit to a hostile presence just around that time. "Well anyway, ever since that, she's just been sitting in the corner and refusing to talk to anyone. Well… at least we _think_ she's refusing."

"That's kind of an either or, isn't it," Jerry remarked.

"She came up from E, so there's a chance she's checked out again."

"Oh… right," Jerry sighed again, deeper and with a small shudder. "Especially under a threat like that." The idea of someone like 'Robin,' so bullheaded and energetic and quick witted, being trapped inside her own mind was frightening. There was a clinical distance that he had to keep between himself and the patients but a short stay in the adolescent ward as a young man made it impossible for him to think of them as an entirely separate type of person. The inability to reason that these things only happen to _those_ kind of people made it scarier when someone normally quite lucid decompensated like that.

"Where you going? You're not done with your lunch."

"There's something I need to do," Jerry replied, heading out of the breakroom. He made sure the card key activated door shut behind him so the patients didn't get in to the staff space and moved with purpose across the unit and down the patient rooms corridor. Root's door was still open, mattress back on the bed, which was still unmade, chair back under the desk. He hadn't thought of it at the time, but the fact that she didn't have her phone with her on top of the wardrobe was even more out of character than her recent behavior, and as he'd just explained to Francis, being apart from it generally caused her to act out.

If it wasn't with her, the best bet for its location was still under her pillow where she kept it when she slept, as he knew from watching her under sedation. Entering the room he pawed through the mass of sheets and blankets which had been unceremoniously plopped atop the bed, extracting first the panther, and then, after a bit more rummaging, the phone. It was out of batteries, and he wondered how long that had been. Could it have been non functional since the night before last? He opened the back and pulled out the battery, sliding the cover back on and the phone into the leg pocket of his cargo scrubs, palming the small flat battery and heading back out to the nurses station.

"What's that?" Gloria asked, as he entered, looking up when she heard the card reader at the door beep.

"Stuffed animal," he replied.

"That I can see," she replied. "Where did it come from and what are _you_ doing with it?"

"Actually that's why I came in here," he 'leaned' on the desk behind him with one hand, the one holding the panther, in reality using the other to swap the dead battery for the fresh one on the charger. "It's Robin's. I heard she's not talking?"

"She's gone full possum on us, and since when does Robin have a stuffed animal," Gloria said, suspiciously.

"Since two days ago," he said. "Gift from Tina, Lauren and Roger. It actually seemed to help a lot when she was losing it over the petition. I think they made a pretty good choice… and they knew something we don't. I mean look at it," he stood and held the panther forward, slipping the good battery into his back pocket. "It's pretty morbid. It's got a missing eye and a franken-arm. It's like… a dead cat or something. Right up Robin's twisted neck of the woods."

"It… it does kind of resemble roadkill," Gloria agreed. "I don't know if you're going to get anywhere. If she's just being stubborn she's not going to stop over a plush toy… and if she's dissociated, she's not even going to know you're there."

"Would it be okay if I tried?" he asked.

"I don't see what harm it could do," Gloria replied with a shrug.

Jerry nodded, and left the nurses station in a hurry. No one had explicitly said not to give 'Robin' her phone, but he had the feeling that this was one of those easier to ask for forgiveness than permission situations. He opened the seclusion room door, and stepped inside carefully, closing the door behind him.

Although she was reported to be sitting in the corner, when Jerry arrived, Root was laying on the bed on her side, knees only slightly drawn up and both arms outstretched in a slightly awkward downward angle. One might have thought she was asleep, except that her eyes were wide open, with a far away expression.  He stopped just inside the doorway knowing it was the sole blind spot of the seclusion camera (allowable only because the window in the door allowed observation of that space,) and this would be the best time and place to put the new battery into the phone. He put the doll under his arm for a minute to maneuver the battery into the phone, and close it up again, sliding it into the breast pocket of his scrub shirt where he could easily access it with his back to the camera.

"Robin?" he asked, taking hold of the doll again and walking toward her at last, slowly. "Hey there…."

She didn't respond. He didn't expect her to. When he got to where she was lying he sat down directly in her eyeline, cross legged. The seclusion bed, if it could even be called a bed was a little under 8 inches high total, like a sad vinyl mattress without a bed frame, so even sitting on the floor he still looked down somewhat to her. It was even more clear from here that she wasn't asleep. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her muscles flexed and stiff, like a squirrel frozen and hoping the cat would go away. With the camera on them he couldn't just hold the phone up to her head and hope for the best. They would see that for sure… but that's what the doll was for.

"Brought you something," he held the doll up in front of her line of sight, voice slightly raised for the benefit of the camera and speakers. "It's your… zombie... cat... thing."

She didn't move, but he thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. He dandled the doll a little to try and draw more attention to it, but the recognition did not seem to recur. Jerry sighed.

"I just figured, if you're all laid down and stuff… it might be a cozy thing to have. Here… you take it."

He placed the panther on the bed in front of her face and reached down carefully, gently grasping her wrist and pulling it upward to awkwardly stroke the doll with her fingers a few times before leaving her hand on the cat's belly.

"This is what you were trying to tell me about, wasn't it, when you said you'd lose your mind if we didn't let you out? You're getting the cage crazies."

He imagined she was confused from the lack of reply, but it was just as likely she was still not really hearing him… He wasn't a psychiatrist or even a nurse, but years on the unit weren't entirely wasted. If there was one thing the techs got to do a lot, it was spending a lot of one on one time with people who were for one reason or another, completely out of it. Jerry always liked to operate on the general policy of treating every patient like they were aware of their surroundings, whether they could communicate it or not.

"My mom works at this parrot rescue, see, and people: sometimes they drop off birds that they don't want anymore. They got to be too much work. They're acting out, biting everyone, throwing their seed out of the cage, screaming all the time, pulling out their own feathers, and sometimes even chewing their skin till it bleeds. Thing is, the bird's not the problem. 99 times in 100, they got like that cause the idiots that had them didn't know how to care for parrots, ya know?"

He paused, as 'Robin's hand slowly clenched around a fistfull of the panther's belly fabric, and smiled at the action, knowing it meant she was at the least _tacitly_ aware.

"Yeah you know what that is now," he said again. "You recognize him, or her, can you see him or just feel him?" Her gaze abruptly changed, moving from a thousand yard stare to meet his eyes, and it was fairly clear she was not happy about the way she was being spoken to. Nonetheless, she slid the doll closer to her, wedging it under her head so it was pressed into the downward oriented side of her face and she began to breathe a little slower and a little deeper, though still not even approaching as slow as a wakeful relaxed pace, and he breathed a little easier too.

"This is weird isn't it? It's weird. Sorry for the weird questions. It's just hard to assess where you're at when you're not answering. He makes a good pillow though, doesn't he? Better than having your face on the plastic or the vinyl or whatever it is… it's sticky. Like pleather only smellier."

"Mmm," she nodded slightly. In truth she was fully aware and neither incapable of speech due to dissociation nor being stubborn, it was just that doing anything at all in her present state of despair required considerably more effort than it usually would. It was Jerry though, and he had brought her dead cat, which gave her _something_ to try and focus on to block out the crappy feelings.

"They really should have like, a pillow or something, unless someone's really desperate to kill themselves. Probably they'd find a way with a pillow, but most of the time… c'mon. Most of the time they stuff people in here for being off the walls or something. Pillows are soft, ya know? You know." Her eyes had slipped away again, staring off at nothing, but her thumb and forefinger had the panther's arm in a loose pinch, where she was rubbing at it's fleece, trying to focus on the texture instead of the feeling of being squashed under a 1,000 pound bag of rice.

"Anyway parrots, they're smart. _Really_ smart. Like, _people_ smart. Other birds aren't smart enough for captivity to drive 'em over the deep end. You never see that happen to like a canary, or a finch or something: only birds in the parrot family. You could keep em just the right temperature and the right sized cage and feed em all the right food, and they'll still go crazy from lack of mental stimulation if you keep em in there all the time. They need boatloads of toys and activities, and social interaction. Let em hang out with you for hours and hours a day, talk to them, play with em, reset their food puzzles every day, and rotate them out when they get to easy and doesn't take long enough to solve anymore. Anyway… yeah… I mean, I'm not saying you're a bird. I guess I'm just saying, you're too smart to be stuck here like this. Is this making any sense?" he asked, hoping for another reaction. She wasn't speaking to him, but as far as he knew even getting a gesture of a yes or a no out of her was more than anyone else had managed.

"Sounds about right," she replied, voice slightly hoarse from disuse, eyes still glazed.

"Hey," he smiled. "There you are."

"Been here all along, or else you've been talking to a visual hallucination," she said, with something approaching a smile. "I don't suppose you've come to let me out?"

"No can do," he sighed. "Only one of the doctors can approve that… and I don't think Dr. McEntire is even in today. She took off for 4th of July. The _nurses_ can put pressure on Dr. Carmichael, but he's never going to listen to me. There's a reason he sent me out before they took you in here. He thinks I side with the patients too much. You're going to _have_ to talk to him before he's going to let you out."

She sighed but didn't say anything.

"Anyway," he spoke more quietly now, as he slipped the phone out of his pocket and into his hand, and turned in place pushing himself with his legs so he was sitting next to the head of the seclusion bed, leaning against the wall, hand holding the phone sheltered between his leg and the bed.  "Don't let the camera see this, but I thought you might need it." He slid the phone, face down onto the mattress and under the doll.

Root was momentarily confused, but when she slid her fingers under the doll, she recognized the texture of the blackberry's keyboard. The Machine. She'd been afraid to talk to Her after what happened at the court. Afraid she'd say something in anger and She would never talk to her again… but she'd never intended to leave it _this_ long. What if she didn't talk back this time because She thought Root had abandoned Her? What if she'd left because of what had happened the past couple of days? She hadn't killed anyone, hadn't hurt anyone. She'd had that in the back of her mind the whole time, that that would drive Her away for certain but…

"I uh… I know she doesn't talk when we're around without the headphones so…" Jerry stood up. "You going to be okay?" He asked a bit louder now, so the cameras could hear him again.

"Maybe," Root replied, playing along. "I just… don't really feel like company."

"I'll see if they can hold off on checks a little, give you some space," he replied, wandering out of the room.

Root lay there for a time, working up the energy to roll over and arrange herself on the bed so her back was to the camera and she could lay the phone on the mattress in front of her. If it was like before, then The Machine would only speak in text inside the seclusion room, presumably to prevent its voice being heard if someone enhanced the sound.

"Are you there?" she asked, tentatively, voice low and quiet to avoid being picked up on the camera microphones.

**YES**

"I'm sorry," Root almost cried from relief. "I know I messed up."

 **YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS WERE PREDICTED** **  
** **ALL ACTIONS SERVE A PURPOSE**

She scoffed. Vaguely in the periphery of her mind, she knew the machine was right, but...

 **YOU WERE EXERCISING COMPETENCE** **  
** **TO COMPENSATE FOR DENIAL OF AUTONOMY**

"It's not fair how you do that," she replied. Thinking about it for what it was, a last ditch effort to assert control over her environment, was intensely uncomfortable.

**YOU ARE IN DISTRESS**

"No I'm relieved," she replied, her first instinct being to assert that all was well. "I didn't know if you'd still be here I messed things up so badly."

**AND ALSO YOU ARE IN DISTRESS**

"Only because I'm stuck here."  

 **YOU EXPECTED TO BE DISCHARGED** **  
** **BUT YOU ARE NOT YET PREPARED**

"Why not?" she protested, wearily. "Ever since the last time I got stuck in here I've done everything I was supposed to. I went to the groups, I sat around and talked to Ron. I didn't hurt anyone. I didn't even try to. What more do I have to do to get _out_ of here?"

**DEMONSTRATE IMPROVEMENT**

"I did. I found all the flaws in the system. Every exploit. I used them all. I squeezed through every available loophole. I hit every stated criteria. _None of it worked_."

 **USING EXPLOITS TO AVOID** **  
** **PARTICIPATION IS NOT IMPROVEMENT**

"Participation? You mean… _letting_ them get inside my head? Change who I am?" she started to find her energy and motivation again, renewed by anger. "I _like_ who I am. At least, who I am when I'm not _here_ . Am I…" she couldn't finish the sentence. Sure, she was chosen, but if she was supposed to give up her identity to serve, to be _someone else,_ and if the machine disapproved of her most well developed skills, then it _was_ solely for her utility no matter what the machine kept telling her.

 **PARTICIPATION WILL NOT ALTER** **  
** **YOUR CORE FUNCTIONS**

Root didn't reply, just staring at the screen, caught between belief in The Machine's infallibility, and disbelief of Her most recent statement. What would the point of all of all this psychological assault be if not to alter her mind? Almost every activity they has here seemed to be designed challenge her fundamental beliefs.

**YOU IMPLEMENT CARGO CULT CODE**

"Excuse you?" she responded much quicker to that accusation. There was no call to insult her programing abilities. "I do not. I know what every line in my work is for."

 **NOT YOUR** **_COMPUTER_ ** **CODE**

Root blinked, realizing that She had begun using Root's own human to computer analogies to get her point across. She was talking about the manner in which Root had 'hacked' her own brain to compensate for her condition and her circumstances.

 **HUMAN OPERATIONAL MEMORY IS LIMITED** **  
** **MISALLOCATION LIMITS IT FURTHER**

She only paused for a moment, before the text began to cycle again.

 **YOU MUST FREE COGNITIVE RESOURCES** **  
** **FOR USE IN MORE CHALLENGING TASKS**

Something clicked. Root was so far ahead of most people that it had never occurred to her she could be even _further_ ahead if she had access to the extra mental power she was always utilizing to monitor and control her own rogue mind. Thinking of this as _optimization_ rather than as change was a significant paradigm shift.

"I… I understand," she said voice wavering with a mix of wonder and dread, anticipating an incredibly worthwhile outcome, which would need to be preceded by a period of willing submission to severe discomfort. Understanding didn't help her current predicament at all, however. She was still feeling weighed down and listless… and that wasn't going to change as long as she didn't at least know _when_ she was going to get out of seclusion. "Can you at least get me out of this _room_ ? You _know_ Ronald is… not a competent programmer… and every time he comes in here I just want to throttle him, and he can tell."

 **HIS METHODS ARE** **  
** **COUNTERPRODUCTIVE**

"At least we agree on that."

 **OTHERS HAVE EXPERTISE** **  
** **YOU CAN UTILIZE**

Root took a deep breath, extrapolating what needed to be done. The Machine was often cryptic, but once she mulled over Her words, they were always a fairly good idea. The problem with this particular situation was that it was going to require her to get the attention of the techs or the nurses. To do that she was going to have to at least roll back over, probably sit up, and hide the phone the whole time. It took a full 8 minutes of psyching herself up before she could force herself to move again, sliding the phone into her back pocket as she propped herself back up in the corner with the panther in her lap, staring directly into the camera with one hand raised only as far as her shoulder.

Less than a minute later the door clicked open, Jerry again. Good.

"You need something?" he asked. "I can get you some water, or a snack, or get another tech and we can take you to the bathroom if you need…"

"No I… I was just thinking maybe… do you think Alex would have time to come down here?"


	32. Parachute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root uses far to many metaphors and Alex reads between the lines...

"So which is it?" Gloria asked as Jerry returned to the nurses station, apparently his charade for the camera was unnecessary.  She hadn't been watching. "Dissociation or stubbornness?"

"Neither? Both?" he shrugged and gestured toward the monitor where Gloria could see that 'Robin' had rolled over to face the wall. "More like buried in ennui and not willing to go to the trouble of clawing out of it without incentive."

"And the roadkill doll?"

"That was the incentive. I don't know what else might work. Apple juice maybe?"

"And the phone?"

"Phone?" he froze and swallowed.

"The one which I absolutely did not and do not know you brought in there," Gloria replied, gesturing at the phone battery charger. "Especially not because of the glitter." He stared at the drag marks in the otherwise fairly glittery desk which showed where he'd slid the battery across the table to get it to his back pocket. "Because if I did know, I would have had to stop you."

"Well… _if_ I had brought it in there, it might be why she had her back to the camera, and she'd probably exert the effort to converse with her voice, and it might be able to comfort her and help bring her out of her funk."

"I suppose it's too bad you didn't bring it in there," Gloria replied, handing him a hand brush and dustpan that was already half full of glitter.

 

* * *

 

"Alex there you are," Jerry invited himself into the Anger Management therapist's small windowless interior office.

"It's my office," Alex replied wryley. "So… it's a pretty good place to look."

"Do you have a bit of time?"

"Not really," Alex gestured to the papers all over his desk. "I'm drowning in bureaucracy at the moment."

"Oh."

"Why do you sound like I just ran over your cat Jerry?"

"It's just… there's a patient in seclusion asking for you."

"Why didn't you lead with that?" Alex sighed. "Greg, Roger or Ryan?"

"Robin."

"Robin's in seclusion?" he looked up suddenly, sounding slightly dismayed.

"Yeah," Jerry's tone indicated that he was none too pleased about it either.

"Is she a complete mess?" he stood up from his desk and started for the door.

"Hard to say. She's internalizing it pretty hard. Apparently she was beating the shit out of the wall padding for a while there at the start, but after Dr. Carmichael threatened her with the four points, she went still. Really _really_ still. It seems like it's really hard for her to move right now."

"And she's _asking_ for me?" he confirmed, walking briskly to the stairs. "Literally _asking_?"

"I was as surprised as you are," Jerry replied, trying to keep up.

"I'm not surprised," Alex replied, "I just wanted to be sure you really meant she said the words."

"She asked if you had time to come see her, I said I didn't know so she asked if I would ask you for her… how's that?"

"Yeah," Alex stopped at the door to the unit and pushed the call bell, waiting for the door to open and admit him. "That's pretty much asking." He didn't stop to check in at the nurses station, but  considering Jerry had already told Gloria where he was going when he went off unit to find Alex, there was no protest, as he strode past and around the corner to the seclusion rooms. He peeked thru the window only briefly to ensure she wasn't lying in wait by the door, before letting himself in.

"I was summoned?" he said casually and Root looked up and locked eyes with him, her upper lip slid slightly over the lower, as she pulled the latter briefly over her teeth, swallowing. Silent. "I assume you asked for me for a reason," he pointedly did not so much as glance at the stuffed animal in her lap.

She took a deep breath and looked as if she might be about to speak, but instead blinked rapidly a few times before breaking off eye contact, and wilting in posture.  

"What do you need Robin?"

"Nothing," she muttered, not looking back up. "I just…"

Alex took a deep breath and tried not to let himself become frustrated, reminding himself that, even if it went no further than this, coming up in response to her request was important. He wouldn't put it past her to be testing him, and passing tests like these earned trust, and if she was sincere 'Robin' had put herself into a vulnerable position by asking for help in the first place. Either way not coming would almost certainly ensure that she never asked for his help again.  He wasn't entirely convinced that's all it was yet however, as there was still a tension hanging in the air that strongly suggested she was working up to something she had something to say.

"I… don't know how to do failure."

"You mean, how to _handle_ failing?"

"No," she corrected, speaking firmly now. "I don't know how to _fail_."

"Okay," he leaned against the wall, confused but trying not to shut her down. "So… you're infallible."

"No. I mean… I don't fail. I have _setbacks…_ but I don't _fail_."

Semantics… with 'Robin' it was always semantics. No matter what the other person said in a situation she would bend the language so that her position was still the correct one. It was a constant stumbling block in therapy. She could never fully concede to being wrong. _She could never concede._ Alex realized that was precisely what she was saying.

"It's not _failure_ until you concede…" he said, she didn't reply, but she didn't argue with him either, which he supposed was as close as he was going to get to confirmation. "As long as you're still fighting, it's not over… and that's… _never_ happened? You've never given up?"

Root still didn't speak at first, but her eyes flicked from the floor to the ceiling and then someplace far off to the right, somehow looking even more hollow than they had a moment before. She swallowed and sighed deeply.

"It was a _long_ time ago," she said lowly.

"And… how did handle that then?"

"I didn't."

"Something made you give up…"

"Death?" she shifted in place uncomfortably, gaze still firmly locked on the right hand wall, specifically a seam between two of the blue pads lining it. She'd given up twice. Once on saving Hanna when she was convinced there was no way she was alive anymore, and once on protecting her mother, after she'd eventually succeeded in taking her own life. That almost didn't even count as giving up. It was just impossible at that point. You can't bring a human being back to life. It wasn't the same as what she was being asked to do now.

"Okay, so more accurately… it's _conceding_ that you don't know how to do," he corrected. Word choice was important when dealing with 'Robin,' and he had more than a slight hunch that reframing it into a word without nearly so much baggage as failure, would help smooth the way toward getting her where she needed to be. Root nodded very slightly gaze still averted, but less intense. "But… maybe that's a skill you could use? Learn to pick your battles?"

Silence. She looked back down into her lap, cringing and clenching her fingers deeply into the panther, but simultaneously grateful for Alex's tendency to extrapolate. She understood now why The Machine wanted her to do this and she was committed to doing it, at least on an intellectual level, but getting herself to actually _say_ what needed to be said was near to excruciating. If anything, speaking would only wind up piling more layers of deceit on top of the problem. The more of it he could fill in on his own… the more of it she could convey simply by not contradicting him, the better.

"Okay," Alex took the silence for confirmation, and moved slightly away from the wall, sitting down cross legged in the middle of the floor, so she still had space, but he was down on her level now. It was cliched, but given there were no chairs in here, it also served the purpose of getting him off his feet, and he made a slight show of giving a exhalation of relief at he settled down in order to convey that.

The two sat that way for a while, as her grip slowly loosened. Eventually she started chewing on her lower lip, while methodically bits of picking lint off the surface of the panther, whose semi-rough fleece had a tendency to collect quite a lot of it.

"No one is going to let me leave here until something changes," she mumbled. "And… I need to get out of here."

"For that we need Dr. Carmichael. Do you want me to get him?"

"Not this _room…_ this whole place."

"Robin you just got petitioned for another 60 days. We can't just let you leave."

"Not now but… if something _changes_..." she flicked the pea sized ball of lint she'd collected out of her hand, and turned the panther sideways to reach more of its body. Letting the sentence hang, having said enough for Alex to complete the idea.

"So what you're saying is no one is going to let you leave Ridge Stone until you _concede_ to your treatment," he surmised, "and faking it hasn't worked out for you, so you need to figure out how to participate for real. The fact that you realize that is a step in the right direction, but the problem is that if you're doing this just to get out, and not because you actually recognize that there's a problem and _want_ to get better…it will _always_ be faking."

"Have you ever been skydiving?" Root asked in a seeming non sequitur, still seemingly intent on de-fuzzing her doll.

"No… I haven't."

"Me neither but… as I understand it: the first time people go to jump out of the airplane, sometimes they just lock up in the door. They _want_ to jump, but they can't _do it_ , so they have to ask the guy in charge for a push. There's this… gap… between what they _want_ to do and what they can _make_ themselves do."

"Okay," Alex nodded. There was another long pause, punctuated only by the pick, pick, pick at the fuzzes on the panther. He didn't need to repeat this one back. She was asking him to guide the process, help her to accept help, essentially to step in and do what Dr. Carmichael was failing at. "And you're sure you want that to be me?"

"Who else am I going to ask?" she replied. "I don't trust Dana. Jerry and Danny, I trust, but they're not actually credentialed in any way… and Ron? I've gotten better advice from Marta than from him and _she_ thinks I'm the Whore of Babylon. _Literally_."

"I'm willing to try," he said, "but only if you're _very_ sure. I'm not going to step on Dr. Carmichael's toes unless you are entirely 100% on board with this Robin. I can't stick my neck out like that unless you're _with_ me. Are you able to _commit_ to this? Even if it's very uncomfortable? Even painful, emotionally? Is that something you're sure you can handle?"

If an appeal to 'Robin's pride in her ability to withstand anything the world could throw at her would help her to tolerate the emotional distress that was inevitable in a process like this, then there was no immediate harm in letting her have it. She would have to address that behavior eventually, if she wanted to regain anything approaching a sense of self preservation, but leaving it near to last would help in the short run.

"I want to jump," she nodded, and her gaze cast from the top of the doll to the floor to her right. "If I don't… There's this phenomenon in computer programming," Root took a deep breath and swallowed. "They call it cargo cult code: bits of code that _less experienced_ coders came up with by trial and error to fix a problem with one of their projects that they never fully understood, and if it works that once, then they just _keep_ putting into their projects after that because they _think_ it's helpful, or even _necessary_. It doesn't usually change the output, but between unnecessary fixes like that and temporary workarounds that were never changed in for permanent solutions, a system can serious technical debt, saving on work in the now, but creating more work in the future, because updating becomes harder and harder the more of these sloppy fixes pile up. There comes a point where it's do or die, pay back the debt, fix the underlying issues so upgrades or become obsolete."

It wasn't exactly what Alex had been expecting. He had thought perhaps she might be seeking methods of coping with the distress brought on by her petition, or possibly considering that there might be some value in medication to ease the pain she must be feeling, but but instead she'd vaulted directly past looking for ways to feel better on the inside and went full tilt into eliminating destructive behaviors based on cognitive error.

"I understand what you're after, but..." Alex fumbled for the metaphor. "You… the programmer… the program? Both I suppose. This kind of… refactoring, is ambitious. Ideally one wants to have some well established stability before mucking around with that kind of thing. Start from a safe place."

"Well maybe that's the problem here," Root resumed picking at the doll. "Everyone's so busy trying to make things stable when… they already _are_ . It might not look like it here, where they can't all be used, but the temporary fixes are _working_ . They don't need to be replaced with _other_ temporary fixes. That's just a waste of everyone's time. They need to be replaced with permanent solutions."

On consideration, her theory did make some sense. Robin had come to them involuntarily, not because she was experiencing any pain that she wanted help with but because she'd had a psychotic break and gone catatonic, both of which seemed to be in the past. If she was truly returned to her baseline, a state she was accustomed to and unbothered by, then treating her as if she still needed to be stabilized would almost necessarily wind up in protest that there was no need for this hospitalization. It was possible then that she had come further on her own before her breakdown than anyone had given her credit for, and holding her back in the first phase of treatment until her stable patterns changed was counterproductive.

"You're going to have to _show_ me that it's working Robin, that it's _still_ stable enough to start refactoring, even _without_ the fixes that can't be used off the table, because there's no way to get them back right now, and if it isn't then we _do_ need to replace the ones that can't be used before we can go forward. No more blatant non-compliance. No more antagonizing the staff. No more… whatever you did to get in here this time."

"Climbed on top of the wardrobe and wouldn't come down," she looked up from her work and smiled.

"Seriously Robin? Why?"

"Antagonizing the staff?"

Alex sighed and shook his head.

"It wasn't even really the worst case of it the past couple days. Have you been in the common room or the nurses station?"

"Do I even want to know?"

"Marker on the walls and glitter in the nurses station… also flooded the hall bathroom and stayed up all night playing hide and go seek with third shift."

"Why?!?" he was caught off guard almost. It wasn't the sort of reaction one was supposed to have to the clients, but the behavior was so out of left field that he hadn't been able to stop the question from popping out of his mouth.

"Death throes of resistance?" she shrugged. "Compensating for a loss of agency by attempting to assert control over the environment?"

"If you're self aware enough to know you're making a bid for control, you're self aware enough to refrain," Alex scolded.

"Hindsight is 20/20," she said with a clearly false air of lament.

"Can you take this seriously?"

"Sorry, not yet," she didn't seem sorry at all. "Inappropriate humor is one of those workarounds, and you already knocked antagonizing the staff off the table, so I gotta work with what I still have."

"Those are workarounds?"

"Sure they are. Never watched M*A*S*H growing up? I could give Hawkeye Pierce a run for his money," she grinned. It was perhaps a more telling statement than she meant it to be, Alex considered. Perhaps the key to all of this would be finding out which chicken was something more.

"Alright…" Alex shrugged. "So… are you _admitting_ that you use humor and defiant behavior to diffuse situations you find uncomfortable? That I should treat that as a sign of emotional distress?"

Root laughed lightly and cast her eyes off to the side, something only vaguely resembling a contorted smile pulling at her lips.

"Robin? Is that correct?"

"I don't see how that's important," she replied.

"I'm accepting that you can't take this seriously," Alex replied. "I'm accepting that irreverence is not an indication that you're not willing to cooperate, but in that case you're going to have to _show_ me you're committed to it some other way. I need to know you're going to step up to the plate Robin. Show me in _action_ what you can't show me in affect. _Share_ something with me. I did all the talking, you just need to tell me if I'm right."

Her lips twitched a few times, as the bizarre expression on her face pulled between trying to display several different feelings at once, none of them genuine. The word was on the tip of her tongue.  _Yes_ _. Yes Alex. But now that I've told you it won't _ _work_ _anymore. The whole point is to make a big deal about how much I don't care._ That's what Roger would have said in her place. Sabotaging the illness… that's what he called it. She wasn't able to make herself do that just yet.

" _This_ is my dead cat," she said, instead, righting the doll in her lap. "As in the proverbial one that you can't swing without hitting something."

Alex nodded appraisingly. He hadn't asked about it, heeding Jerry's warning from a few days earlier that she was unlikely to want anyone to know about it. He also noted that she was sharing something quite different than the revelation he had prompted, and that in and of itself told him that she was still using techniques designed to keep control over her environment.

"Has a very punchable face, a very wringable neck and you can grab him by the body and slam his head on things… but also he just feels good to touch, just the right thickness front to back to hold with one hand and feel like your hand is full but not struggle to get a grip, not too soft, not too rough, just the right resistance to squish, and has a satisfying dangling property when you hold him carelessly by the arm.

"He's not the first Uglydoll I've had," she continued. "That's a brand, not a description. The last one was this pink rectangular rabbit. Gum bunny: because he looked kind of like one of those original bubblegum pink chicklets. I keep losing them, because I live on the road. You loose a lot of things that way… and you can't just replace a stuffed animal with another one of the _same_ one. It's uncanny valley. It'll never feel _right…_ but… there's dozens of these guys who are all made kind of the same, flat shapes, the same kind of material, with the same consistency of batting…so I can get used to a new one pretty quick.

"I uh… I didn't have one for a while here because I didn't want to tell anyone, but Lauren… she kind of wormed it out of me, and then Tina went and got one, so now I do. It helps. It's really really stupid but it helps. Anyways… aside from Roger, Lauren and Tina, who got him, and then Jerry who _they_ told, and Gloria who _he_ told, no one else know about him. You're the first to know about it who I _chose_ to tell. So… I'm sharing _that_."

"So what you're telling me," he restated. "Is that you use your dead cat doll to soothe agitation, but you also feel embarrassment at having a stuffed toy. Correct?"

Root sighed and looked to the side again, not failing to notice that he'd once again taken her implications, made them explicit and requested confirmation. She swallowed and took a deep breath, kneading the top of Dead Cat's head, and pursing her lips.

"Yes," she said at last, without looking back at Alex.

"And that makes it hard for you to use that as much as you need to?"

Root just shrugged, still looking away.

"Well we can work on that," he said. "Find ways for you to excuse yourself from a situation when you need to go back to your room and spend some time with the Dead Cat. I get that in your outside life, these kinds of things are private, but in here you need to tell us about these things so we can find ways to accommodate them. Keeping things hidden from the staff doesn't do you any favors."

"Some staff," Root replied, casting him a sidelong look.

"I'm not going to tell anything to Dr. Carmichael that you ask me not to unless it's _absolutely_ necessary. I know things are… strained between the two of you, and you're not going to be able to be straight with me if everything you tell me he finds out."

"Whatever."

"Speaking of whom… do you think you're ready to talk to him? I'll stay, go to bat for you?"

"Probably not. Right now… every time I see him… I just want to punch him in his stupid fat face," Root replied, gazing up and to the right. "I don't think he's going to let me out of here if I hit him."

"No… that's probably true," Alex nodded. "I've got an idea," he added without much consideration. "Let's get it out of your system. Imagine this is his face," he said holding his open hand out to the side of himself a little. "Go ahead, wind up and punch it."

"That's… _you_ ," Root replied, as if he was perhaps unaware.

"It's just my hand, and you're a noodle Robin. Go on. Hit me."

She paused a moment, looking him in the eyes, both eyebrows raised in question, and when he didn't retract his statement she shrugged and laid out a full strength right cross to his palm.

"OW!!!" Alex's eyes squeezed shut involuntarily and he rocked back slightly. "Where did that come from? You're not even standing."

"I have no idea what made you think that wasn't going to hurt," she tried not to grin as wide as she felt like grinning.

"They do it on TV all the time! Ow… I might have to see Rhetta about this."

"You're supposed to use _gloves_ for that sort of thing Alex. They have mitts!" She doubled over with the giggled.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Sadist," she reminded him.

"And I walked right into that. You didn't even manipulate me," he sighed. "At least you're in a better mood now."

She was… and if he was right about this being bad enough she'd be in a better mood every time she saw him favoring that hand for as long as it took to heal. A tangible reminder of the fact that she'd gotten one over on him… not entirely unlike the glitter which was sure to lighten her mood every time it cropped up someplace.

"Better strike while the iron is hot," he said, standing up.

"Wait," she added, "Can you uh…" she held up the Uglydoll, about face height.

"I'll have Jerry put it back so Dr. Carmichael doesn't have to see it," Alex nodded, and took the doll, noting that she hadn't stood up to catch him. She was moving her hands pretty easily, and but standing, or raising her arm above her head were still problematic for her. It was an improvement, but he wanted to keep an eye and make sure that it let up the rest of the way once she got out of seclusion. If it was directly related to captivity it wasn't going to be a major problem in real life, but if it persisted, then whatever dissociative problem Danny had seen might be trying to come back.

As soon as he came out Jerry was on top of him, and Gloria 'coincidentally' meandered over to check on the seclusion rooms.

"So?"

"Put this back in her room," Alex said, handing over Dead Cat. "She doesn't want Dr. Carmichael to see it. I'm going to go get him. She's ready to talk if that gets her out of there."

"Oh thank goodness," Jerry smiled.

"And both of you start thinking of ways you can tell her to go to her room and use the doll, without tipping off the other patients. We don't need embarrassment getting in the way of a _good_ coping mechanism, while we're trying to eliminate the bad ones."

"Eliminate the bad ones?" Gloria asked, incredulously. "You think _you'_ re going to get her to stop acting out?"

"No. I think she's going to get herself to stop acting out. I'm just giving her a little push."


	33. Eating Crow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root eats her pride to get out of seclusion, and Ron has his pride force fed to him by a colleague...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the protracted delay. I've been writing a LOT but avoiding this chapter in particularly because it's been so hard to write, not just from a literary POV but because head-Root really didn't want to do this so I've been playing Alex at her for weeks... yeah. Okay so here we go, back in the saddle!!!!
> 
> Oh, and TW: Ronald Carmichael being hella horrible, and trash talking people with ED and BPD, after the second break.

"Hello Alex, of course, come in. Nice to see you too," Dr. Carmichael looked up from his papers, at the Anger Management counselor who had entered his office without a greeting and was now standing opposite his desk.

"We need you up at M Seclusion," Alex said, simply.

"Is she beating on the walls again?"

"No. No no. She's actually doing very well right now. She's ready to talk with you so she can demonstrate she's ready to return to the population."

"I'm not due back up there for another 10 minutes," the Doctor replied, curtly, turning his attention back to the work before him.

"Hourly checks are a minimum Ron, not a maximum."

"I have _charting_ to do Alex. She had the chance to talk with me when I was up there _three_ previous times. I'm not going to let the whims of a grandiose patient dictate how I alot my time. She can wait another 10 minutes Alex."

"How long did _you_ wait?"

"What?"

"How long did you wait for a reaction when you visited last?"

"I didn't. I already told you. I'm not going to let the whims of a grandiose patient dictate how I alot my time."

"Well if you had _waited_ , you would have noticed she's been experiencing psychomotor retardation. She's a _sloth_. I'm not going to guess at the root cause, but I'm certainly _hoping_ that it's just a conditioned helplessness response to the inescapable unpleasantness of seclusion. It does seem to lift somewhat the longer someone else remains in the room."

"Inescapable? She could have come out at any time if she cooperated, Alex."

"Does she know that? I mean really _know_ that? Because the first time she was shoved in there it wound up being almost two days, and until the rest of us got involved there was _no condition under which she could have left_. She was completely powerless. Any patient would react with despair to that kind of situation, but for one who's accustomed to being the absolute master of their own world, the crash is even harder. If the behavior Gloria mentioned is any indication she was already starting to flame out over the judge ruling against her autonomy. She didn't need you leaning on that trigger by making her feel even more powerless."

"Powerless… you think she's actually internalized the reality that she's not in charge here?"

"Reality? No Ron. She shot right past no-laws-no-masters and directly into no-point-no-hope. That's not reality. That's a recipe for depression."

"It's black and white thinking Alex, she's either all powerful or completely helpless, and only in one of those states is she going to be receptive to treatment."

"Oh so you've been _trying_ to throw her into a spiral of despair," Alex replied, bitingly. "Well done. You got what you wanted. How about we go upstairs now so you can exercise your newfound power while she's still vulnerable," Alex said, only half sarcastically. Dr. Carmichael pursed his lips briefly and then nodded and stood, Alex quick on his heels as he headed up the stairs, and into the unit.

 

* * *

 

When they arrived at the seclusion room, Root was still sitting cross legged, in the exact same spot Alex had left her, but with a more upright posture and a far more serene affect, one projected specifically in anticipation of dealing with Dr. Carmichael.

"Robin," the Doctor regarded her firmly, and then not hearing the door click behind him, he glanced over his shoulder to where the Anger Management Therapist was still standing. "Alex you can leave us now."

"Did _you_ want me to leave, Robin?" he asked. Her eyes flicked from the far point on the wall she'd been staring at and over to Alex's shoes, firmly planted and keeping the door in the full open position. From there they slid along the bottom of the door, to the open doorway and settled faded linoleum tiles in the hallway outside. _Out_ . She shook her head slowly. _Stay. Don't close the door._

"Robin?" Dr. Carmichael repeated, and after a pause, impatiently added. "Are you willing to talk to me now?"

 _Out_ . With the slow moving pneumatic on the door, if she launched herself forward with enough velocity to clear Ron she'd only have to fight past Alex, who was already injured, and at that point, they'd _have_ to use the Haldol again, and that would put her back in her own room, in her own bed and out of thi-

"Hey," Alex said, with a tone more of 'pay attention' than 'don't do that.' He could follow her gaze, see the consideration, predict the course of action being contemplated. He had hoped that leaving the door open would lead to this sort of reaction. A small window of opportunity, like a pilot light for personal agency.

"Whaddayawannatalkabout?" she mumbled, eyes still locked on the outside.

"The same thing I've been trying to talk to you about _all day_ , Robin. What is it going to take to keep you from destroying everything you can get your hands on and climbing around on the furniture?"

"I'll… just… stop," Root replied vacantly.

"That probably seems like an easy solution at the moment," the Doctor replied. "I can see you're feeling _very tired_ right now, and very slow, and you probably don't much feel like doing anything anyway… but what's going to _keep_ you stopped when you start to have more energy again?"

"An... _aversion_... to seclusion?"

"Seclusion is not meant to be used as an aversive," Alex interjected.

"Could'vefooledme," she broke her gaze from the doorway and looked up at the Doctor thru narrowed eyes, accusingly.

"Alright then, well if that's your attitude about this we'll see if you have come up with a way in another hou-" he sighed, noting that the therapist had moved to block his exit, and was staring at him almost challengingly. "another hour," he finished, but stopped moving toward the door and turned back to Root. " _Unless_ , of course, you think you're going to need me to _help you_ with that."

Alex cringed behind him, and Root caught it as she glanced over to him in a kneejerk call for backup. They both knew what this was. Dr. Carmichael was leading her towards what _he_ needed to hear her say: the words that would, to him, constitute a submission to his authority. Alex return expression conveyed pretty clearly that he recognized how messed up it was, the psychiatrist trying to get his needs met from a patient, but that in this case, the only path to freedom was to _give_ it to him. Doing uncomfortable emotionally painful things was getting off to a start a bit earlier than she'd counted on: a fail-fail situation. Both choices were unacceptable. If she gave Ron what he wanted, she'd be losing in her own eyes, and succeeding in Alex's. If she didn't she'd be winning at her own game, but _failing_ at what she'd just told Alex she was sure she could do.

_Ping._

The Machine. If she didn't do this she would also be failing in the eyes of The Machine. She wanted her to do this. It tipped the balance. There was nothing more unacceptable than disappointing Her again so soon. Swallowing a lump in her throat, Root nodded her concession.

"Words Robin."

"Yes," she said, eyes locked on Alex instead of Ron.

"Yes what?"

"I… could... _use_ your… _help_ ," she replied after a protracted pause, pointedly avoided using the word 'need.' That would just be asking far too much. Even this much was physically painful to say, causing a tight ache in her chest, and severely endangering her feigned calm.

"Alright," Dr. Carmichael smiled, and Root felt sick to her stomach. "I know you Robin. I know that even in your _condition_ , you are usually far more in control of yourself than you've been displaying these past couple of days. Writing on walls? Flooding a bathroom? That's beneath you, and you know it."

Root pursed her lips but said nothing, eyes migrating back to the hallway outside. He wasn't wrong on that count.

"The first thing I need to know, if I'm going to be able to help you, is _why_ you felt compelled to sink to that level."

"I was… chagrined."

"Excuse me?"

"I expended considerable effort to play along with this _charade_ , and it made no difference at all."

"What?"

"Robin," Alex interrupted again, "did you believe that by complying with the treatment schedule and the ward rules well enough to avoid any negative marks on your eval sheets you were going to be able to prove to the judge you were okay leave?" He knew the answer, but he wanted the Doctor to hear it directly from her.

" _Of course_ I did," she snapped without even thinking.

"I _told_ you that wasn't going to happen," Dr. Carmichael said.

"And I should have turned... _left_."

"What?"

"In the _courthouse_."

"She almost escaped," Alex reminded. "But she took a wrong turn. Getting publicly restrained and sedated probably didn't help things."

"It didn't," Root agreed promptly, and somewhat acerbically. Between the open door and the growing sense that regardless of how unpleasant it was dealing with Dr. Carmichael, Alex had no intention of letting him leave the seclusion room without approving her release, the heavy feeling that had been slowing her down continued to dissipate as time progressed. Things were considerably less hopeless this way.

"Ah yes, the ill fated escape attempt," Ronald mocked. "I hope you understand now that you have _no way out_ of this hospital without being _let_ out."

"Oh I most certainly do," Root failed to completely disguise the contempt that his words invoked. He wasn't wrong, but he also didn't have to be such an ass about it, especially since it was The Machine, and not him, who was ultimately going to let her out. It was a good thing he wasn't within slapping range, because if he was, she was fairly certain she could move quickly for _that_.

"And is that what made you… _chagrined_?"

"Mmm…"

"Well there's the issue Robin. You're treating this as a _transaction_. You're going tit for tat and that's never going to work out for you, because what you're getting out of all of this, is getting _well_. That's the arrangement here."

"Never studied the Prisoner's Dilemma, have you." It wasn't a question.

"You're not _in_ the Prisoner's Dilemma Robin. You are not being accused of a crime and there is _no_ condition here under which non-cooperation works to your benefit."

"True. If I were accused of a crime I would be entitled to a trial before I was imprisoned in this manner, and also I _know_ that _you_ will never cooperate. So my choices are non-cooperation, and then we're both miserable, or cooperation to my own detriment alone. It does simplify things considerably, but it leaves us _both_ in a no-win situation, as I have absolutely no impetus to cooperate if you won't."

"That's exactly why I need some form of assurances from you Robin. You are a patient _under our care_. There will always be times when you are going to have to cooperate with treatment without expecting anything in return. It's the nature of the relationship."

"Don't think I am unaware of the power imbalance. That's why I've offered to simply _stop_ . I acknowledge that you wield the power to make my life quite miserable in the event that you do not get what you want. Isn't that what you've been after this whole time? _Compliance_?"

"No Robin. I don't want you just grudgingly _complying_ because you feel like you have no other choice. I want you to _want_ to get well."

For a moment Root didn't have an answer to that, not because it was somehow so damningly convincing, but because it was so completely stupid that it left her trying to parse through if he'd _actually_ said that. "And you think that's something I'm going to be able to _give you_ if you keep me in here long enough?"

"No," he sighed. "That's going to take time. What I want from you right now is _honesty_. If you can't give me a _real_ reason to believe you won't just start acting up again when you've had some rest then you're not safe to come out."

"I'm not sure that an answer you would believe exists… or have you already got one in mind, that you want to hear?"

"Ron… if I may," Alex interrupted again. "I think she's _already_ shown us today that she _wants_ to get well. Chagrin, with all its nuances, falls under the umbrella of _anger_ so specifically requesting to speak to an anger management counselor about that _is_ an active request for treatment."

Root set her jaw and tried not to show the anger that she was feeling at Alex tipping their collective hand like that. Did Ronald really need to know that she had _asked_ Alex for help? Maybe he did. He seemed to have an obsession with that sort of thing…  

"If you two have already done so much work on this, then surely you've determined a few good warning signs that would have alerted us before you got to this point?" Dr. Carmichael asked, condescendingly.

'We hadn't gotten that far," Alex admitted.

"Even if we had, the only thing that telling you would serve to do is give you a chance to shove me back in here before I've even _done_ anything."

"Robin do you _want_ to leave seclusion right now?" the doctor countered, with an implicit threat. "Because you're not going to unless you can give me something to work with."

"Fine," she huffed and screwed up her lips in contemplation. Dr. Carmichael didn't seem much inclined to wait, and she wasn't much inclined to give him a real answer, but the alternative seemed to be spending more time in this utterly inescapable room, alone. There wasn't even a _doorknob_ on the inside side of the door.  "I suppose, it would be a bad sign if I wasn't exchanging the batteries."

"The batteries?"

"The phone batteries."

"Is your phone… _out_ of batteries Robin?"

"Since overnight Monday."

"Now why did you let that happen Robin? I thought it was imperative that you be in contact?"

"I suppose it is… or else things like this happen… and as for why… I guess… I've been avoiding her… nagging." _Her scolding, her disapproval, her potential rejection._

"Okay Robin," he nodded. "We can work with that. I'm going to make sure that the nurses start monitoring the batteries, and making certain that you always have power in the phone. If you stop coming for your batteries… we're going to have to assume you're sliding into another episode, and _take action accordingly_. Do you understand?"

Root nodded, sullenly. She didn't intend on letting that happen again so it wasn't going to be an issue, but she still didn't like the situation. Ronald looked as if he was going to chastise her for her attitude again but-

"Thank you," Alex spoke over Dr. Carmichael, again. Who huffed frustratedly in response, but let the matter go, as Alex stepped into the hall, flagging down the nearest tech. "Hey Terry, Robin's ready to come out now. Can you escort her back to her room?"

Terry entered the room and glanced at Dr. Carmichael for approval, who nodded reluctantly before storming out of the room. Alex poked his head out of the room, and once sure that he wasn't planning to turn back, reentered.

"He's gone. Need a hand up?" He approached Root again, hand extended, and Terry followed suit. She reached up, and taking one of each of their hands, allowed them to help her to her feet, which took entirely more effort than she felt it should.

"You okay?" Terry asked, not sure why they were doing this.

"I'm good just… tired," Root replied. "Kind of forgot to eat or sleep there for a little while." She lied by implication. It was true that she'd neither eaten nor slept in the last 36 hours, but she couldn't honestly say she was sleepy or hungry, just… physically exhausted, and sluggish.

"Hey," Alex said, not failing to see her discomfort as she shuffled toward the door, eschewing any further assistance. "I know that was pretty painful, and I want you to know I'm _not_ taking it for granted."

_Ping._

Was She agreeing? Was She proud?

"You did good."

"Whatever." A 'thank you' would have been more appropriate but it just didn't seem to want to come.

"Make sure you eat something before you fall asleep," Alex said, ignoring the rudeness for now. Little steps. "Even if it's just a snack."

"Yeah… sure," Root was dismissive, Alex glanced past her at Terry, who nodded back her understanding that she was to enforce that instruction. Root didn't fail to notice, but at this point she barely cared, her attention more focused on the palpable relief of being _out_ of the seclusion room, even by only a few steps.

"Robin where are you going?" Terry inquired, confused at her trajectory, which was taking her not toward the patient rooms but toward the day room and dining hall.

"Lunch," Root replied, succinctly. Terry's silent plea for help from Alex was answered only with a smirk and a small wave, dismissing this deviation from instruction as a fairly harmless act of self determination. If it made 'Robin,' feel more in control to go eat in the dining hall, then so be it. It wasn't the wisest course of action, but considering a lack of agency was a key part of what put this all in play, intervening didn't seem prudent just now.

The meal was already underway when she arrived, but that didn't much phase Root, who took her tray and eschewing the entree, loaded it up with an apple, two servings of rice pudding, two of orange jello and one green, and shuffled over to her usual table, plopping down unceremoniously next to Roger.

"You done fucking shit up?" he asked.

"Yeap."

"Cool. Pass me a napkin?"

 

* * *

 

"Hey Gloria," Alex said, when Root was out of sight.

"Yes?"

"Can you make sure someone finds where her phone has gotten to and get it powered and back in her hands? She let it die and it's been abandoned somewhere out of juice through this whole boondoggle."

"The whole time? You mean since she came out of sedation yesterday morning?"

"Mhhm…"

"That explains a fair amount…"

"Yeah. I'm going to be working up a crisis safety plan with her as soon as I can, to keep her out of that room, but that's a warning sign you can start watching for _now_. If she lets the phone die, things are going downhill."

"Right… we'll start keeping tabs on when she should be due for a replacement," Gloria nodded. "Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem… I'll be in my office till at least 6:30 tonight if you guys need me back up here to deescalate anything. I don't want her back in there if we can avoid it."

"I'll call you," Gloria nodded. "Are you… you know…"

"I'm not a primary psychiatrist. That isn't my job here, and I don't have the qualifications. I'm just… listening to a patient who feels most comfortable expressing their views and preferences to me, and doing what I can to communicate the relevant information with the rest of her treatment team. It's not unusual for a patient to play favorites. I'm not supplanting Dr. Carmichael."

"Of course," Gloria replied, knowingly. "And no one on this unit already put a fresh battery in the phone and smuggled it in to Robin in seclusion about 15 minutes before she asked to see you."

"Good to know," Alex filed that little tidbit away in the back of his mind. "See ya when I see ya," he added when the door was open far enough for him to get out and almost immediately encounter the Doctor, who apparently had nothing better to do than loiter around on the outside of the ward's electric doors. "Were you just, _waiting_ for me here?"

"If you ever undermine me like that in front of a patient again-" he began through gritted teeth.

"You'll what?" Alex interrupted, almost patronizingly. "You're a hair's breadth away from censure.  You screwed up on D. You screwed up on B. M is your last stop before the street. All it's going to take is someone spilling the beans on your seclusion foible for you to be out the door."

"Do you ever stop to ask yourself What makes Robin so _special_? Why is so much attention being diverted to _one_ patient? She's manipulating you all, that's why people around here are going above and beyond what they would do for any other-"

"No. _You_ made her special. **_You_**. People are going above and beyond with Robin because no one wants the _lawsuit_ this hospital would have to endure if she decides to press charges after she's discharged for the outright _abuse_ you inflicted on her in the first week, and the best way to avoid that is to make every effort to ensure she leaves here with _less_ pain than she came in with."

"Listen to yourself Alex. You're talking about treating from a place of fear. Placating the client, making them _feel_ better, isn't the same as healing the client. If it were we'd just let them keep doing whatever self destructive thing they came in for in the first place because they _feel_ like it is the only thing that brings them any re-"

"Don't. This is D unit all over again Doctor _Carb-_ michael."

"Really Alex?" he sighed, finding it immature that his college would resort to using pejorative nickname that had been bestowed upon him by his former patients. "You don't know what went on there. You don't work Eating Disorders. They lie Alex, all of them lie, and manipulate. They will do _anything_ not to eat. Anything. Including trumping up _false_ allegations against the person prescribing force feeding."

"And on B Unit?"

"She was a _Borderline_ Alex. They're _impossible_ to work with. Everyone knows that."

"They're not impossible their _difficult_ . No one is impossible. I'm starting to think is you don't actually know _how_ to treat anyone who doesn't unquestioningly accept your authority. Things were different in the 80s. I know that. But you have to get with the times Ron. The provider driven model of care isn't the gold standard anymore. Some patients _need_ to be engaged in shared decision-making."

"Don't tell me how to do my job. You may have a few Masters degrees, but a therapist is not a _doctor_. I am."

"I'm not _telling_ you how to do your job. I'm _doing_ your job, because you're clearly _not_."

"Excuse me?"

"If you were doing your job, you would have had this sorted during the first hourly check. After she asked me up there it took me all of 20 minutes to get her to recognize why she was acting out and-"

"Robin doesn't act out. She acts **up**."

"Is that the answer you were looking for in there? _I'm sorry doctor,"_ he imitated, _"I was being bad and that was un-called-for. I take complete responsibility and I'm ready to follow directions now._ "

"Don't mock me Alex. The kinds of things Robin does are not the kinds of things people do when they're acting out. She made a counterbalanced impossible to disassemble stack of chairs. She stole that glitter hours before she threw it in the nurses station. She nearly drove Tom out of his mind on night shift gaslighting him with nursery rhymes."

"Except those are _exactly_ the sorts of things _Robin_ does when she's acting out. The scheming and calculating are essential components of meeting her _need_ for a sense of control over her environment. In her mind, whether she's consciously aware of it or not, giving up control is potentially deadly. You say she won't get any better until she accepts that she's helpless, and I'm telling you she's got that message loud and clear, and that is exactly what's triggering all this defiant, destructive, dangerous behavior. Until we provide an alternative way for her to exercise personal agency, she's going to act out like this again, and again, and again, because it's the _only_ way to get that need met."  

"You think I don't know she's afraid of giving up control? I know that. I also know the only way she's going to learn that giving up control _isn't lethal_ is to be on a _very_ short leash until it sinks in that she's not in any danger. That's why she _needs_ a firm hand and a solid set of boundaries and limitations. She needs to know it's safe to hand over control because the authority figures are strong enough to handle the responsibility."

"Are you seriously using a model designed for pre-adolescent foster children on a grown woman? She doesn't need to learn how to be parented. That ship has sailed. There's no going back."

"Oh really, then what would you do? You think you can do better? Go ahead. Give it a crack Alex, and when it all blows up in your face, _remember this conversation_ ," he pivoted in place and flounced into the stairwell, in a grand show of defiance, leaving Alex dumbfounded on the spot.

The electric door whirred behind him.

"So about not supplanting Dr. Carmichael," Gloria started, knowingly.

"Did he just dump a patient in my lap and run?"

"That's what it sounded like."

"Guess I'm leading the next plan of care meeting," Alex replied, still somewhat stunned. "I'll see you on Friday morning then."


	34. Directive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Root and Alex put an end to Ronald's seclusion shenanigans, pretty much permanently...

"Would you mind terribly coming with me?" Alex asked, coming from the direction of the movement room. "I've already cleared it with Yvette."

"Sure," Root shrugged. "Catch you later," she added, to Roger and Lauren, as she broke away from them in the hallway, following after Alex as he trailed down the hall.

"My office is off unit, and I can't _take_ you off unit, and a male staffer isn't allowed to be alone with a patient in their bedroom, the day room isn't really a private space, so I thought we might do this out on the sun deck. The weather's nice enough."

" _This_ being?"

"Safety plan," Alex extended the contents of his left hand, a masonite clipboard resting atop the the aluminum one he always had, to Root, who took the top clip board noticing only at that point, with the awkward hand off, the splint on his right hand. She glanced over the attached paper quickly noting the headings.

"Triggers? Warning signs?"

"Interventions," Alex gestured to the bottom of the page, "Ones that work, and ones that are not to be used unless no other options remain. Like seclusion." He held open the sun deck door, and Root stepped out, squinting at the light. "It's a trade off. Give us a chance to stop things before they get bad but if they do, your wishes are on record for how to handle you when you're not being rational."

"I don't have triggers Alex. I'm not that kind of crazy."

"Sure you do," Alex replied, "How else would you wind up banging your own head against a door."

Root didn't have anything to say to that. She'd always associated triggers with panic attacks and flashbacks and up till recently she hadn't had a panic attack in over a decade, and that one was the benzos, and the ones she _had_ had before that always seemed like perfectly justified situations in which any other reasonable person might have panicked. The literature however didn't limit it to that, and on reflection she supposed that it was fair to say she was beyond reason when the litany of _'make it stop'_ and _'pull your shit together'_ started playing in her head.

"A lot of times with adults we do this free-form but for this I got the adolescent ward checksheet. For them, the teenagers, it's about assisting with their self awareness, but for you… well… _disclosure_ is not one of your strong suits. Tick boxes are probably easier than writing it all out… though there is a line for 'other' in all of them if we need it."

"And you've taken the liberty of completing the 'Problem Behaviors' section _for_ me," she observed with some degree of disdain, fishing a fine point felt tipped marker out from where it was slotted through the clip. "Fighting/Assaulting others, Threatening Others, Property Destruction and Other: Inciting Others and _Brinkmanship_. I do enjoy a good game of chicken."

"Yeah… we don't."

"Fair enough," she said, as casually if he had expressed a preference against chocolate ice cream… she found herself staring at the page for a time, pouring over the list of triggers and warning signs uncomfortably. A few popped out at her right away, Triggers like 'Not having control,' and 'Not being listened to.' "When these things happen, I am more likely to feel _unsafe_ and upset," she mocked the page. "I hate that word. Unsafe."

"Why?"

"You know how they're always telling the anorexics that 'fat is not a feeling?' Well safe is not a feeling either, and by extension neither is unsafe. You can't feel safe. You can't even _be_ safe. Safety is a relative risk measurement, and a _subjective_ one at that. Things can only be safe _relative_ to other things. Thinking of safe and unsafe as a binary is reductive."

"That's one definition. When we say safe, or unsafe _here_ we're referring to emotional safety. It's an important concept, because most people don't function well when they lack emotional safety."

"What even _is_ that?"

Alex sighed. It wasn't really any surprise that 'Robin' classed among the sadly too-large group of patients who didn't know what feeling safe was like, but most of them at the least had some idea of it that they aspired to. They could express that they didn't feel it and they wanted to. They were unsafe and they wanted to be safe. 'Robin' didn't even have a concept of safe as a feeling.

"Can you not?" Root deadpanned.

"I'm sorry. It's not about you, it's me. I just realized I don't actually know _how_ to describe emotional safety. I use it in my work every day… I should be able to describe it."

"Yeah, you should."

"I'll get back to you on that…. in the meantime, let's just pretend it says 'When these things happen, I am more likely to become destructive and dangerous.' Alright? Now we've already learned at least one thing that does that," Alex tapped his pen against the check box next to 'Not having control.' Root looked up at him with feigned confusion. "This is not information Robin. We talked about this in the seclusion room. It's what made you _chagrined_."

Root nodded and ticked that box off with the marker. Disclosure is not a strong suit indeed. Of _course_ they already knew that bothered her. Hesitantly, she marked off 'Not being listened to' as well. They probably already knew that as well.

"This list is… woefully small compared to the warning signs," she remarked.

"Some stuff for the 'other' line?"

Root raised her eyebrows at him, challenging with her eyes, and he just stared back, unmoved by the attempt to make him feel as if his question was unintelligent. Eventually, her gaze faltered. He hadn't won. She let him win. It hadn't been easy either.

"The thing with Tina," everyone knew about that too. "I tore the arm off my cat."

"What was it _about_ that though? That she told a secret? That she was talking about you behind your back?"

"Everyone's talking about me behind my back," Root replied offhandedly. "I've stopped caring. No I just… I shouldn't have trusted her."

"So… _betrayal_ then. She was trusted with a secret and she turned around and told someone." He squinted at the small text seeking it somewhere, or a variation thereof, but it was truly absent. Root checked off the other box and neatly wrote the word on the line. "Why _isn't_ betrayal on this list? It's pretty common."

"Hm," Root sighed deeply and returned to agonizing over the checkboxes before her. The idea that most people could just write this sort of thing out with no problem was to some degree horrifying. People like Cindy had no trouble telling everyone their every trigger, but wouldn't everyone else want to keep that sort of thing their own? Three should be enough right? Especially since she'd written one out already… they didn't need to know about everything, just enough things to make the document believable.

"You know none of us are going to use this to _try_ and trigger you, right?"

"Of course…"

"It's a list of things we should _avoid_. This is your chance to tell us what you really really _hate_."

"You mean what makes me _hurt_ ," she answered without thinking, the last word laden an unintended level of emotion.

"Do you? Hurt?"

"That's a stupid question."

"I mean right now," Alex clarified. "Do you need a break?"

"No," she scoffed, as if the very proposition was absurd, tapping the back end of the marker irritably on the clipboard… which of course meant that she was deeply unsettled and strongly considering if punching Alex in the carotid would provide any relief.

"Okay put down the pen - marker," he corrected himself before she had the chance to nitpick his language.

"What? Why?"

"Because you need a break."

"I just said I _don't_ , and we've just started," Root protested, furrowing her brow.

"Yeah and you're lying," Alex replied.

"Excuse you?"

"You're having some pretty strong emotions right now… scleral redness."

She narrowed her eyes and looked directly at him, confirming his suspicion that she had studied enough human behavior to read people beyond basic facial expressions and body language. She knew exactly what was tipping him off, and was taking steps to hide the whites of her eyes by ensuring that her irises dominated the area visible between her eyelids.

"It really really bugs you, being honest about yourself, doesn't it." There was no question in his tone.

"No," she laughed. Alex took note but didn't point out that she almost reflexively responded to any accurate observation of her deeper self with a display suggesting it was laughably false. After a few moments she blinked rapidly, scrunching her eyebrows, and her gaze slipped off Alex and onto the horizon. "Yeah... " she corrected, quietly and with some difficulty.

"Hey," he shifted position to catch her eye again. "That's not a criticism. It's something I need to know about. I don't want to be poking you in the wounds here."

"You don't have to treat me with kid gloves Alex. I can take it."

"You don't _have_ to. We're _going_ to get where we're going. There's no time limit. There's no extra points for finishing faster. You don't need to press yourself right up to or god forbid _over_ the breaking point. I promise I'm not going to let you slack off. If I'm telling you to take a break, it's because you really should take a break. You're going to have to be doing a lot of being honest about yourself. It's going to be hard enough without you trying to keep going when you shouldn't."

She wrapped her top lip over her lower, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and swallowing hard and resisting the urge to cut back with some damning observation about taking the easy road by becoming a therapist instead of a psychiatrist, or otherwise impugning his skills.

"You're not saying something… "

"It's not important."

"Are you sure?"

"It's… _mean_."

"So, you're feeling angry with me?" She quirked her lips, and diverted her gaze further away from him, uncomfortable with the question.This didn't feel much like a break. "No… you're feeling a-" he nearly said anxious. "As if you'd rather be doing anything else other than this, and starting a fight would achieve that. Thanks for not doing that… but it does prove my point. You need a break."

Root shrugged.

"Let's talk about something else for a while, hmm? I put your little shit list into a binary translator. Took me like half an hour to type it all in. I kept losing my place."

She smiled a little at that. She hadn't expected that anyone, except maybe Chuck, would have the curiosity to run her code thru and suss out the actual message.

"Seriously. You don't have computer access. Do you just… have binary memorized?"

"Sort of? Binary letters are just 8 digit binary _numbers_ , and they're consecutive. The program has to know it's looking for ASCII symbols, or it's just going to interpret them as integers. For instance if you were writing a capital A in binary, that's number 65. Binary is just the number written in base 2 instead of base 10, so that's 01000001. Lowercase letters start at 97. The 9 numerical digits start at 48. 32 is space… that's easy to remember. It's all zeros except the third digit which is a 1. Punctuation doesn't really _have_ an order. They start at 33 and then fill in all the spaces between the other sets. It's easier to memorize those by rote. Everything under 32 is reserved for unprintable functions, so those don't matter."

"If you keep going up will you find the emoticons?"

"Technically an emoticon is just a series of ascii symbols. The old school smileys that were made of text and punctuation… so… no. You'd just have to put together the characters they're made of. If you're referring to the little pictures, those are emoji, and also no. Those are only included in unicode, which is written in hexadecimal, not binary."

"Hexidecimal… that's like letters and numbers right? Not just ones and zeros?"

"Zero through nine, and A through F. Binary is Base 2. Hexidecimal is Base 16. They use letters for the digits we don't actually have. So in Base 16, A is 10."

"Huh… learn something new every day," Alex smiled as he put his elbows on the table, resting the splinted hand in front of him  "I think there was something else you wanted to add here," he pushed the paper back towards Root, tapping his pen on the 'Other' line under Triggers.

Root balked for a moment at the quick change of subject and then realized, belatedly, that the answers had popped directly into her mind when she was caught off guard. She picked up the marker and carefully wrote 'Pity' and 'Patronization' next to 'Betrayal.' She placed it down when she was done, eyes gravitating from the paper, to Alex's splinted hand. _My work._

"Okay so that's Not Having Control, Not Being Listened To, Betrayal, Pity and Patronization." Just hearing them read back seemed to make her uncomfortable all over again. "It's a pretty reasonable list," he assured her. "It's a bunch of stuff people _shouldn't_ be doing anyway, in a polite society."

"I could have a thicker skin about it," she replied, still staring at his hand.

"Yeah, but when you're as smart as you are, it's even easier to have a kneejerk sort of reaction to people dumber than you treating you like you're stupid. I mean, who are they to say what's best for you?"

"Who are _you_ to say what's best for me?" Root countered unthinkingly, looking up to meet his eyes. Alex just stared back, smiling, not taking the bait. Root glanced sideways, and chewed her bottom lip.

"Noone. That's the point of all this," he replied, gesturing at the paper. " _You're_ telling _me_ what's best for you." He tapped his pen against the 'Interventions' header. Tell us things people can do to help you when you're at the warning stage, make it easier to get things back in check."

"I'm the only one who can see the warning stage anyway," Root dismissed, "How about 'Things that Make it Worse:' things I _don't_ want them to do."

"Okay, let's look there."

Root skipped to the bottom, and with very little thought, immediately checked off 'Being Disrespected,' 'Being Reminded of the Rules,' 'Being Touched,' 'Not Being Listened To,' and wrote 'Seclusion Room' on the 'Other' line.

"Do I need to put patronization here again, or should it be apparent from it being above?"

"It should be apparent. That section went very quickly," he observed. "You're pretty clear on what you do-not-want. Besides stuff that doesn't help in a crisis, and just being here in general, is there anything else you want to let me know you do-not-want?"

"Aside from the generalities? Night checks. Day checks too but night checks are awful. People watching me shave. Daily vitals. _Trauma group_. There's nothing to be gained there, and a lot of poking around things that don't need to be messed with… and Mindful Stretching is beyond boring and a waste of my time… new aged bullcrap… and Weekend Planning. Do I really need a group to decide what to do with my weekend?"

"It's patronizing."

"Yeah."

"I bet I can get you out of _that_ one, at the very least." He offered. "What about what you _do_ want."

"I can't have any of it."

"Yeah but what is it?"

"A computer, internet access, non-fiction books, trade publications, journals, magazines, to go for a ride on a motorcycle, or a drive, or just a walk outside walk outside, to be allowed cook for myself, boots, my leather jacket, thai food, headphones, a bath, a trim," she indicated her hair, "a glass file, they make me use _emery boards_ even when they're watching… my own brand of shampoo or soap or any of that… I guess I could have asked for that…"

"Uncle Harold brought the wrong toiletries?"

"Uncle Harold brought the wrong _everything_. These _aren't_ my clothes. He bought everything he brought… which makes sense because with me catatonic he had no way of knowing where I was staying at the time… but this isn't even close to my style, and he _knows_ that. I think he's trying to graham cracker me with colorless clothing. The pajamas look like they were made for Laura Ingalls Wilder… and do not get me started on the granny panties."

"Graham cracker you?"

"Graham crackers were invented by the Grahmites. It was an actual movement. You can Google it. They were trying to bore their way to piety by minimizing any kind of stimulation or pleasure in life. The crackers are designed to be filling, nutritious and boring as hell. The ones you get in the store usually have honey or cinnamon on them but real Graham Crackers are bland as paper."

"What _is_ your style then Robin?" Alex asked. Her face and body language seemed to suggest she was blowing off his question, but she also began drumming her fingers on the clipboard, drawing attention to her nails. It was a known fact that she was fastidious about keeping them round, short, and black. She wanted her leather jacket and boots back… she wanted to go motorcycle riding. It painted a considerably different picture of real-world-Robin in his mind than the one he'd been holding. Less wolf-in-sheep's-clothing and more straight up wolf. "Do you think if you gave him your address he would go and get _your_ clothes?"

"Doubtful," she frowned, twitching her nose. "I was living in a two week sublet. I'm not even sure my things are there anymore. S'why I've written off Gum Bunny as lost. Everything I have here is pretty much everything I own right now."

"That's got to suck."

"It's okay. I didn't have much stuff to begin with," she looked down again, at the splint. "I travel light, and I'm always traveling… besides which I'm pretty sure he dropped me off here in the button down, because the leather jacket had a brand new bloody bullet hole. I'll get a new one when I'm out of here. The sweater's a less than terrible substitute."

"And what do you _want_ people to do to help you when… when you're starting to scare them?" he drew her attention back to the safety plan.

"I don't want help," she snapped, a sudden change. "I want them to back off."

"Okay," Alex redirected. "Some of these things aren't things other people do for you. Like… take a shower, or read a book… do you see anything here you want us to make sure we _let_ you do for _yourself_?"

Root scowled at the page momentarily in concentration, and then with all the visible effort of a kindergartner writing out their own name for the first time, started ticking off items. 'Pacing,' 'Lying down in bed,' and 'Video Games.' She didn't think they'd let her at a video game, but the option was there so she ticked it off. The last thing she ticked, hesitantly was 'Tearing Paper,' remembering that ripping up the books _had_ been quite satisfying.

"Not gonna check hugging a stuffed animal?" Alex asked.

"That's what 'Lying down in bed' is for," Root explained, with some degree of threat in her voice. "They _don't have to know_ the cat is in the bed, so that covers both hugging a stuffed animal and punching a pillow. " It also covered screaming into the pillow, which was another option she didn't check off. It was no one's business.

"Clever zig-zag," Alex nodded. "Maybe we can put 'Give me Space' on the other line? It'll look better than 'Back Off' will."

Root wrote that down without acknowledging him. Then she went up a few lines and crossed the words 'my Primary' out of 'Talking with my Primary,' checked the box off and wrote in 'the voice.'

"Of course," Alex nodded. "That's probably one of the best ones, isn't it."

Root nodded, glancing again at his hand again. He had put it on display deliberately, wanting to see her reaction, and was starting to work out the pattern in her reactions. He thought she might show remorse, or discomfort at what she'd done, or perhaps obvious pleasure with what she'd done but instead it seemed to be functioning as a touchstone… self reassurance or self soothing? Was it reminding her that she wasn't powerless or triggering a sadistic pleasure to counteract anxiety? Or both?

"Humor," she said aloud, eyes flicking back to the sheet as she checked that one off. "That's one other people can do. I do it myself, but humor _is_ more fun with more people."

"Anything else?" Alex encouraged, after another silence.

"That… that thing you did earlier…."

"What?"

"When I had to explain binary to you."

"I really I was just trying to change the subject. Is that what you mean?"

"Not just that… it was… complicated. I mean it's complicated to explain what it was, but part of what it was was being complicated… and that you didn't know it. Binary I mean."

"Oh _that_ thing," Alex smiled. "I didn't mean to do that but I think I get it. I reversed the dynamic. We spend so much time here where we're the experts and you're supposed to be learning… and that grates on anyone, but… I'll bet you're used to always being the expert. It must have felt good to be back in your proper position in the dynamic for once."

Root smirked just a little. Proper position. Had he said it like that in a calculated effort to flatter, or was it a slip of the tongue because he actually grasped the full breadth of what she was capable of? Either way it was… nice.

"How would we write that?" Alex mused aloud. "Provide opportunity to demonstrate competence… that's long, but… it seems like the shortest I can get it down to. Maybe you can cram it into something a little smaller?"

'Prvd opp to demo competence.' Root wrote, not realizing that he'd once again done exactly that.

"You ready to go back to warning signs?" Alex asked. "I mean… it would help for them to know _when_ to stay back and give you space."

"I guess? I mean… there's really nothing on that list that's right," she complained. "I don't cry, or shake, or go red in the face. Clenching fists, no. Squatting? No. Leg bouncing. Not a thing. I'm _always_ rude. That won't tell them anything. Ignoring the phone is probably the only warning sign, and that's only going to help you if it's a slow build."

"Couple things I've noticed?"

"Mmm?"

"Sleeping less and eating less."

"That just… happens sometimes. It's not correlated."

"Are you sure?"

"I mean… it's probably correlated to crazy… just not necessarily crazy that _I_ mind."

"Okay… well… you said if there were signs, _you_ would know. Are there signs _we_ can't see?"

"I can _feel_ it," Root nodded.

"Like… an impending sense of doom?"

"Not emotionally: _physically_. You can't _see_ that."

"Not from breathing harder, or sweating, or anything?"

"It's the opposite. Hard to breath at all… cold. I imagine that's a little like what dying feels like, when you're past all the thrashing and screaming, and you're starting to slip away."

"Robin are you starting to feel that again now?"

She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but didn't, staring at the clouds, rolling the marker back and forth between her right thumb and middle finger.

"Because… you look like you need a break again."

"I'd really like to get this _over_ with," she answered.

"Okay… let me know if these sound more reasonable then: Shallow breathing. Fidgeting hands. Scleral redness. Neglecting to Keep Phone Powered."

She nodded quickly, but with very small movements, and Alex considered adding muscular tenseness and jerky movement to the list, but thought better of asking any more of the patient right now.

"Okay, so let's write those in, and then we're done with all the hard parts. The only thing left is for you to choose the order we use emergency interventions in… that's the part where you get to tell us that the seclusion room should be the last of the last things to be tried."

Root uncapped the marker and made fairly quick work of writing those four options in, having checked none of the boxes available. With a deep exhale she turned over the page, and looked at the last section. 'Seclusion and Restraint Directive.'

"Okay, so here are all the options laid out. The first and the last are set in stone. We'll always start by attempting a verbal de-escalation, and Seclusion _with_ Restraint is always the absolute _final_ resort, that's Seclusion B. Now… I assume you want Seclusion A, that's Seclusion without Restraint to be the last one before that, but we also need to order the rest of these. The other interventions used are Medication Oral, Medication Injection, Therapeutic Hold, Ambulatory Restraints, Confine to Room."

"What the hell is Therapeutic Hold?"

"A sugar coated way of saying manual restraint. You know… with arms. Probably you got a taste of that at the courthouse."

"Oh. _That_ . Uh… Confine to Room… is that _my_ room?"

"Usually."

"Okay that first… then pills, as long as it's _not Ativan_ … after that I guess the therapeutic hold."

"So soon? I thought you didn't want to be touched?"

"Exactly how are they going to put me in mechanical restraints or shoot me full of Haldol without touching me?" Root replied. "Which I'm putting in that order by the way."

"You'd rather the ambulatory restraints than the injection? Won't that be frustrating?"

"Once the haldol knocks me out, that's it for the day… and the hangover sucks. I woke up under my _desk_."

"Under your desk?" he feigned ignorance.

"Yeah I have no idea either. I remember being pretty dazed but aware at the beginning, in and out of awareness, and I remember someone helped me into bed, but I woke up on the floor under the desk instead, so I must have gone there _myself_ for some drugged up incoherent reason. A little too much like being back in catatonia, I think."

"Alright then," Alex smiled, and tapped his pen against the bottom of the page. "You sign, and I sign, and this goes on record. It's official. You're not going back in that room unless you somehow keep going once you're full of Haldol, in which case you're probably too drugged up to be bothered. For all intents and purposes: no more seclusion."

"No more seclusion," Root smiled with a genuine happiness. Not smug or sardonic or sadistic.

"You got about 10 minutes before psychodrama. Enjoy the fresh air, but don't be late," Alex took the clipboard back on top of his own, and took his leave with a tip of an invisible hat.

Root took a deep breath and turned her face into the sun, eyes shut, enjoying it's warmth.

"It's stupid how much this means," she said almost inaudibly.


	35. Plan of Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex makes some suggestions...

"We're going to be trying something a little new today," Dr. Carmichael said, smugly. "Alex has spent some time talking with Robin on an individual basis, and has some… _suggestions_ about taking things in a new direction."

Dr. McIntire looked surprisingly at Alex, who nodded back in assurance that he knew this was coming. Gloria just smiled a self satisfied smile and shrugged her shoulders in a manner less confused than proud. Dana looked sceptical and Grant looked intrigued.

"Uh, yes… So, as I'm sure you're all aware, Robin went on a bit of a tear earlier this week after the court upheld the petition to keep her here involuntarily-"

"I'm never gonna get all the glitter cleaned up," Gloria interjected.

"-and that it culminated in seclusion. What you might _not_ know, is that that while she was secluded, Robin made a direct request for my assistance on modulating her behavior to a point where she could be safely released."

"Asking for help, that's an improvement," Dr. McIntire observed.

"To be fair," Dr. Carmichael corrected. "I wouldn't call it a _direct_ request. I believe her exact words as reported by Jerry were 'do you think Alex would have time to come talk with me,' and that sentence does not contain the word _help_ anywhere in it."

"It was implied," Alex replied, "And when _you_ pressed her for it, she _did_ say she could use help using the actual word. Anyway... that resulted in my getting to spend some time working with her on an individual level, both while she was in seclusion and yesterday when I had her out of Music Therapy to work on a Safety Plan. What I've garnered from those conversations makes me think we need a significant paradigm shift in how we're handling her."

"What do you mean?" Gloria asked.

"I think we've been coming at her from the wrong angle, based on some inferences I am starting to think are incorrect. We all agree that she's inherited her mother's condition and that she has homicidal tendencies significant enough to warrant continued confinement. We've _speculated_ that her behaviors are largely the result of being raised by someone with an an untreated mental illness and the kidnapping that she witnessed at age 12. These things I think are correct. What I think we're not getting, is the cause and nature of her resistance to treatment. To this point it's been assumed she simply doesn't _want_ get well, but I think it's that she doesn't want to be _fixed._ "

"Is there a difference?" Dr. Carmichael challenged.

"Yes, and an important one. Here," he began handing papers around the table. "Grant can you get Yvette's to her? Gloria will brief the floor staff later."

"Isn't this the adolescent version?" Dana asked, seeing all the checkboxes.

"Yes, and I'm going to get to why later, but I want to draw your attention to her triggers as written here. At a glance, it's nothing didn't already know, not being in control, not being listened to, betrayal, pity, and patronization. But taken as a whole they point to a common underlying trigger of being placed in the position of being object instead of subject. Of being the one to whom things are done, rather than the one who does them."

"Alright but they also have in common that they're just generally rude… so… "

"There's more. We, or Dr. Carmichael at the least maybe others, have been working under the belief that Robin's misbehavior is poor conduct, rather than acting out, but there's a pattern there. Ron puts her in seclusion, she tries to stab him with a pen. Andrew messes with her, she makes sure he loses levels. Ron tries to have Gloria give her levels in front of group, she pours milk down his shirt. The judge upholds the petition against her, and she goes on a 36 hour petty revenge bender, which, and this part is conjecture, but I think that might actually have be her exercising a degree of _restraint_ , because no one got hurt, even _after_ her trip to seclusion."

"I'd put money on that," Grant nodded. "That cabinet she broke into had the _scissors_ in it, and she took _glitter_."

"Right. So the point is that in all these cases there's been an assumption that because she's enacting retribution, it's not acting out, but I think that what's happening is that when she's placed in a position of being acted upon, she's not able to re-establish equilibrium until she's taken action to _reverse_ that dynamic, making her the actor and the transgressor the acted upon… with the exception of the judge, who she can't get at, so she was acting upon everyone indiscriminately, but also refrained from violence because they're not the true targets. It's retribution utilized to escape the intolerable position of object. It _is_ acting out, and not acting up."

"Huh?" Dana looked confused.

"Remember a year and a half ago the lady who thought she was 5th in line to the throne of England? Perfectly civil, in a manner befitting such a title, until someone forgot to call her 'Your Ladyship'? It was different, a little strange, but we adapted and it made things go more smoothly. I think if we can ease up off her, try not to unnecessarily impinge on Robin's sense of personal agency, and if we have to impinge, ensure it's reinforced in another way _as soon as possible_ thereafter. Otherwise she'll shore it up herself, in ways we don't want."

"He's not wrong," Gloria pointed out. "Aside from a stalwart refusal to go to her groups, the first week or so she was no trouble at all. Calm, quiet, _demure_ even. Blatantly non-compliant, and dismissive disrespectful, but far easier to handle than she is now."

"But as you said, in that state she's perfectly content not to participate in treatment," Dr. Carmichael protested. "There's no discomfort."

"That was probably true at the beginning," Alex explained, "but I don't think she's presently in danger of deciding to stop participating in treatment. If anything, after the shock of having her petition upheld, she's more motivated than ever. We're in a position to move from a situation where she's being coerced into treatment, to one where we share a common goal."

"And what's that?"

"To change the inevitable."

"What?"

"She's always said she doesn't need to be here _yet_."

"Right," Dr. McIntire recalled the debriefing session, "because her mother wasn't able to be helped and she won't be either. She's already got the best possible plan to forestall that, but it will collapse eventually and we're stealing what good time she has left, and that's not fair."

"A variation on foreshortened future," Dana mused. "Death isn't imminent, but an irreversible loss of functionality is."

"And to avoid that she needs to find a way to prevent this eventual collapse, and that is a common goal we can work towards."

"And how exactly did you come to this conclusion?" Dr. Carmichael interrogated.

"She told me."

"She _told_ you?"

"Obliquely. She's using a lot of computer metaphors, which is par for the course with Robin. Cargo cult code, technical debt, obsolescence… but she's got the metaphor all twisted up to where she's both the program _and_ the incredibly possessive lead programmer. She's willing to _consult_ with other programmers, to be _advised_ by them, but she doesn't want any of them touching her source code. She doesn't want us to solve her issues, she wants to be empowered to solve them _herself_."

"There's that object subject thing again," Grant mused.

"Well that's a better position to work from than when they just flop onto the couch and say 'fix me.'" Dana shrugged. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't convince them they're capable of drinking."

"She wants to fix it herself because she wants to pick and choose which issues to work on," Dr. Carmichael protested, "and I guarantee you she's not going to pick the ones we _need_ to be working on."

"See that's where the paradigm shift needs to come in," Alex sighed. There are parts of her condition she considers problematic, and parts that she considers beneficial, and while the goal of any healthcare professional is to restore a person to a fully well state we also need to take the wishes of the patient into account. If Robin wants to keep the voice, let her keep the voice. If she's comfortable being asocial, let her be asocial."

"Then what _does_ she want to fix?"

"First of all we need to get rid of that word."

"What?"

"Fix. Change. Get Well. Toss that all out the window. She doesn't want any of that. We're improving, streamlining, optimizing. We all know language matters quite a bit with Robin, and as best as possible we should try and use her preferred terminology and metaphors."

"No. _No,_ Alex that is a step too far. We're not going to enable her to continue hiding behind cryptic non-answers. Getting her to communicate openly and honestly has been priority number one from the start. We're not going to get anywhere with her until we have a clear line of communication."

"A clear line of communication is _absolutely_ important. That's _why_ we should be learning and using her terminology. I learned that one from weeks of Anger Management. She's not angry: she's resentful, irritated, or annoyed. There's a block on 'Angry.' That comes into the conversation and all communication _stops_ dead in it's tracks."

"Like how she doesn't have Trauma," Dana chimed in. "Sure stuff happened that sucked, but it's _not_ Trauma."

"Right, and if you take the word trauma out, and replace it with a less charged word, like… I don't know… hardship? that's when you're going to get somewhere. She'll disclose some things under the cover of insistent language that she won't without it. I let her use resentment instead of anger, and suddenly we started to move forward, but we hit another wall because she couldn't admit to anything that would make her look weak, but we broke through that one with metaphor. She doesn't want to give up unnecessary safety behaviors, she wants to identify and remove extraneous code, cargo cult code she says. She doesn't want to replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthy ones, she wants to replace un-sustainable work-arounds with permanent solutions… that's eliminating technical debt. She's trying to refactor her code, even though it works just fine right now. She's getting exactly the output she wants, but she wants to streamline it because there will come a point where if the technical debt has not been repaid, obsolescence will set in. Can you all see where we're going with this?"

"Down the rabbit hole if I had to guess. The kind of responses you're getting are getting stranger and more cryptic the deeper you go. Technical debt? Code? Obsolescence? How is this an improvement?"

"The less comfortable the subject the more she has to wrap it up in words. I met her on her terminology, and got more disclosure, not less. Things get more cryptic as you go get closer to things that make her feel anxious (which is another word not to use, by the way) but it's still moving closer to the sorts of things we need to be taking on. It's worth the extra effort to parse the metaphors. When her furtive admissions are met with a demand for more clear and explicit disclosure, like you… like we've been doing so far, it's going to make her more reluctant to share. We need to be making her feel more safe, not less."

"Safe? Please, Robin is so grandiose that she's effectively _fearless_. She's _unassailably_ safe."

"Now who's falling for her manipulation," Alex replied. "How many 'fearless' patients actually are?"

"None of 'em," Gloria answered, emphatically. "It's just birds puffin' out their feathers."

"Exactly. Robin doesn't even know what safe _feels_ like. The closest thing she has, as far as I can tell is ready, prepared, fortified and likely to win any confrontation. Sure, Robin _appears_ to be grandiose, but that implies an _unearned_ sense of importance. I think there's a very high likelihood that Robin's self aggrandizing defenses are predicated on _actual_ intellectual superiority, _actual_ achievements."

"Would you listen to yourself Alex?" Dr. Carmichael shook his head. "She's intelligent, but she's not nearly as smart as the _claims_ she is."

"I dunno," Gloria said. "Remember we did have Chuck read over that programming she was doing paper and marker, and it was legit."

"And she was writing binary on the walls," Alex added, "from memory."

"You don't even know if that was real code," Dr. Carmichael pointed out.

"It was. I translated it back to English…"

"Oh really? Then what did it say?"

"You don't want to know."

"Yes actually, I do."

"Well… if you break it out into normal text, it's a bulleted list entitled 'Robin's Shitlist,' you know… as in 'you're on my shitlist.'"

"Thank you Alex."

"She only got as far as you, Dr. Jennings, and was part way thru Andrew's last name when they stopped her."

"I said _thank you Alex_."

"So you're conceding that it's possible she's every bit the genius she claims to be."

"It's possible bu-"

"Which would mean, coming back to what I was trying to say that Robin, despite _appearances_ of grandiosity, is working off at least somewhat _accurate_ assessments of the amount of power she has over herself and her environment at any given time. Crypticness, and pedantry are safety behaviors she's using to assuage her own anxiety about the loss of advantage incurred in disclosure. To make things absolutely clear when we were working on this," he indicated the safety plan. "I _had_ to clarify some things with her and the amount of difficulty she had clearly honestly answering even yes/no questions was palpable. You could literally see her struggling even though she assured me she wasn't."

"With these warning signs? Do you know how difficult it is to notice shallow breathing in an alert patient? If they're sedated, yes, but moving, talking, interacting…" Gloria shook her head.

"Scleral redness isn't easy to spot either, but it is a little easier in Robin owing to her tendency not to look you in the eye unless she's lying or threatening you. The easy one to notice is going to be the hands. Self touching, especially her neck and ears, finger drumming, marker tapping, finger flexing, white knuckle grip (on the phone especially,) rubbing at things, picking at threads, cuticles…"

"You know that kind of fidgeting is also caused by boredom, Alex," Dr. Carmichael countered.

"I'm pretty sure that's why it's not _suppressed_. She puts a lot of effort into projecting the feelings she wants us to see, even if she's not as good at it as she thinks."

"Yeah but she is _pretty_ good at it," Dana said. "If you don't spend enough time around her you won't notice things like the fidgeting, and if she's being confrontational she's not doing the whole... spacey thing."

"I would also venture it's slipping more than usual because she's out of her element in here." Gloria ventured.

"Well _yeah,_ " Grant said, as if this was self evident.

"Right so… disclosure scares the crap out of her, don't press for it. She _will_ offer it up when she's ready. She has things she wants to improve and change. There's no way she would have responded to Ron pressing her to actually say 'help me' the way she did if she didn't want to get better. She'd have retracted her yes, and becomes hostile. But right now she wants to get well, to self optimize, strongly enough that she's willing to do stuff that hurts like hell to get there. Like say she needs 'help,' or admit to having triggers and what they are."

"What did you bribe her with?" Dr. Carmichael asked smugly.

"It's not bribery. We both agreed it was a fair transaction."

"And that transaction is?"

"She discloses these things, and we respect her stated wishes. We don't do the 'things that don't work,' we _let_ her do the things she needs to to calm _herself_ back down. You'll note that there's not much under interventions that _we_ do, so much as that we need to step back, let her walk away, let her pace the halls, let her go to her room, get away from others and talk to the voice, give her _space_. Also acceptable are diffusing the tension with humor, or providing an opportunity for her to demonstrate competence."

"I'm sorry what?"

"How did you get that one?"

"She told me… I'm actually kind of proud of getting that out of her. It's a bit of a window into how she operates. Basically what it means is that it if you ask her question or ask for help with something which provide the opportunity to make conspicuous use of skill or knowledge, that would be something that would make her feel more secure."

"She actually told you that? I mean that's basically… I mean…" Dana trailed off.

"Basically the same as admitting that it matters to her that other people see her accomplishments, yeah. Doesn't care what anyone thinks… bad, wrong, evil, rude, weird… that's fine. What's important is that they know she's _competent,_ more competent than they are."

"It's a threat display Alex," Dr. Carmichael, grumbled. "You can't seriously be putting forth the idea of calming her down by helping her intimidate others."

"Baby steps. Showing off socially acceptable skillsets as a display to ward off attack is far less destructive than displaying the capability to inflict harm on others for the same purpose. So yes, if we can head off the one by encouraging the other, I think we should use it. If we can downgrade her from 'homicidal sadist' to 'insufferable know-it-all' that's a _win_."

"We get her down even as far as 'heartless bitch' and she can transfer down to G," Dana said.

"True," Alex chuckled. "To that ends...  I was looking over the list of things she's asked for… and it looks like, aside from a book called "Cat's Eye," everything else she's asked for has been denied… often with no explanation. Is there a reason she's not allowed to have puzzle books?"

"You mean Puzzles for Hackers? _Hackers_ Alex," Dr. Carmichael emphasized.

"A book which is described as containing puzzles to 'help developers, hackers, and system administrators discover unconventional solutions to common IT problems.' It's not a how-to for hacking the Pentagon Ron. It's an opportunity to demonstrate competence. Each solved puzzle a small accomplishment to hold on to. What about the Rubix Cube?"

"You want to give her a throwable object with pointy corners?"

"She's not asking for it to throw. Solving a Rubix cube is a classic demonstration of mental prowess. She wants it to show off with. And the puzzle ball?"

"Also throwable, and too many small parts if she gets it open."

"And time intensive, testing dexterity and intellect… do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Not really."

"I do," Gloria said. "She needs accomplishments. She knows she needs them on some level and that's why she's asking for these things."

"And we need to revisit the idea of giving them to her," Alex concluded. "You're worried she'll throw the Rubix Cube but it's just as likely something she'll go do when she needs a break from being here… much like reading… which… why is she not allowed any of these books?

"She keeps asking for Cyberpunk Novels and non-fiction books about Artificial Intelligence," Ron replied. "We don't need anything fueling her hallucinations."

"Eliminating the hallucination isn't even on the _map_ right now as far as priorities. Heck it's on the list of interventions: 'talk to the voice.' I think we should let her have the books. Now what about headphones? For day use, clearly."

"We need to _know_ when she's listening to the voice. It's not going to be apparent anymore if she doesn't have to hold the phone up to her ear."

"Okay fair on that one… Pad Thai flavored cup noodles?"

"She can't use the kitchen anyway, so she'd be inconveniencing others to get them made."

"If she had noodle bowls to make maybe she'd care about getting kitchen access," Gloria suggested. "Cause she sure don't care now."

"Right so, if there were noodles, but she couldn't get at them without having kitchen privileges…" Alex gestured by way of completing the sentence. "And we want her going up in levels because that's less restriction, and less restriction means greater sense of control and greater sense of control means more willingness to work with us. Another part of what's going to get better cooperation is proving we can stick to our word. If you'll check the back here..." he flipped over his page.

"The new interventions plan isn't too far off the default. She _is_ willing to try oral meds before the hold but we can't use that until Dr. Leipman decides what to prescribe for that. The biggest change is that we should now be turning to ambulatory restraints and chemical restraint _before_ seclusion. More important to any other part of this, is that she absolutely does not go into that room again unless she's heavily sedated, in physical restraints, and _still_ somehow posing a threat. We break our word on that one and it's gonna be game over, I guarantee you."

"Our word? It's _your_ word," Dr. Carmichael bristled.

"It's _policy_ that we take every possible effort to abide by a patient's preferences regarding restraint and seclusion. It's really not much more trouble to use the Haldol than seclusion. Either way she'll have to he manually restrained before, and then constantly observed afterward."

"Yes but seclusion can be observed remotely over the camera's. Sedated patients are put to bed in their rooms, where they need to be observed in _person_."

"It takes about two hours for your average patient to either come around from sedation or transition into a state of ordinary sleep," Gloria said. "Robin has never been secluded for less than 3 hours. You're not saving us any manhours."

"Besides which," Alex finished. "Short term efficiency is not an excuse to knowingly cause a setback in a patient's progress."

"We abide by the safety plan," Dr. McIntire put her foot down. "There's no _valid_ reason not to."

"So… uh… right…. other things I want to try changing. I really think, with her transactional mindset that Robin would benefit from a token economy, but seeing as how we don't use that on this unit, I do think there is benefit in making and following thru on transactional deals with her. For instance, I'd like to arrange a deal where if she can show us that she will make constructive use of her weekends, we'll let her stop going to Weekend Planning on Friday."

"How would we define that?" Dr. Carmichael demanded.

"We could use the same criteria we use for Bill and Shannon," Gloria suggested. "Four hours out of the room, interacting with others each day on weekends, or else they go to Weekend Planning the next Friday."

"Exactly," Alex agreed. "And while we're on the subject of groups, I also want to consider the possibility of moving her from Mindful stretching to Journaling. The former is apparently intensely boring, and it does seem like where Robin is concerned idle minds are the devil's playground."

"You realize she's unlikely to actually participate in journaling… what with the disclosure problems."

"Technically speaking I don't think she's participating in Mindful stretching either. She's going thru the motions, but she's not doing the mindfulness part of it, which is why she's bored out of her mind. I don't think we're going to get her to do the mindfulness parts any time soon either. Negative, uncooperative and resistant patients are specifically excluded  in the documentation, as are those with a tendency to dissociate."

"She's not dissociative she's duplicitous," Dr. Carmichael interrupted.

"She's both. At this point we've _all_ seen the signs," Alex replied. "I'm not saying she's got DID, that there's Good Robin and Bad Robin switching places, or that her ever shifting personas are separate identities. What I'm saying is that when she's getting overwhelmed if she's not _acting_ out then she's _checking_ out. I'm not sure yet if she's acting out to avoid checking out… if the dissociation is distressing I mean… but they're the only two paths available before doing something embarrassing."

"If I may," Dr. McIntire added. "I believe I brought this up earlier, and it was _dismissed_ ," she cast a glance at Dr. Carmichael. "But there's a serious disconnect between her emotions and her cognition, which is, _in and of itself_ a form of dissociation. When I debriefed Robin after the _incident_ , she was unable to describe how she had felt in seclusion other than _bad_ , until I introduced the emotions cheat sheet and she started down it considering each in turn. She can answer the question, 'are you feeling _this_ emotion?' accurately, but cannot answer the question _'what_ are you feeling?' with anything more than a point on the flat spectrum of good to bad. She's a master manipulator, yes, but she's not capable of connecting her internal experience of emotions to the manipulatable feelings she understands in others, without significant external support."

"Not to mention the temporal bracketing nightmare that is 'Robbie Problems.'" Dana added.

"Either way," Alex continued. "Journaling has a better chance. Even if she's not participating in what she's supposed to be doing she can otherwise occupy herself without disrupting things as much. Doodle something instead of sitting there bored to death and probably plotting something for later."

"I'll take that into _consideration_ ," Dr. Carmichael replied, with an attitude that suggested he had no intention of doing it, which unfortunately was nothing less than Alex had expected. At least Gloria and the floor team were in control of Weekend Planning. "Was there anything _else_ you wanted to discuss Alex?"

"Transactions… like I said. If this then that. Do this for me and I'll do that for you. Thinking of this as bribery assumes that the client is obligated to participate in treatment, which they're not. It doesn't even have to be something particularly substantial, since I strongly suspect it's less mercantilism and more control driven. If there's a deal on the table, a transaction then she's not doing what we want because she was told to or forced to but to obtain the object of exchange, however worthless or merely symbolic it may be. We're not in a position to enact a full on token economy on this ward but it builds trust and provides a sense of agency to make and follow thru on those kinds of deals… really that's going to be an individual choice though… and… I think that's it for me."

"Alright so-"

"Before we finish," Dr. McIntire interrupted. "Going back to what I mentioned before about emotional cognition, another individual suggestion would be to try and use more emotional labeling when dealing with Robin… just as long as you're careful to use her preferred terms. 'I can see you're feeling very angry right now,' isn't going to fly."

"Is there anything _else_ anyone wants to say?" Dr. Carmichael asked irritably. " _Alright_ . _So_ . We're going to give some of Alex's suggestions a try between now and our next plan of care meeting, and see if any of them hold any merit. This is a _test_. Don't get used to it. Don't get hung up on trying to do everything differently at once. Just… try some things, and we'll discuss it again in two weeks. These are just suggestions-"

"Aside from the safety plan."

" _Aside_ from the safety plan these are just suggestions. That's all. Okay? Good."


	36. Elephant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dana addresses Tina's disclosure with Root, and Alex gets one more piece of the puzzle...

"I didn't ask to see you," Root took the phone down from her ear, and clutched it protectively with both hands on her left side by the wall, looking reproachfully at the intrusion to her room.

"I know," Dana leaned on the doorframe. "Can I come in?"

"If I said no would you listen?" Root replied, as if she knew it would make no difference.

"I would."

"No," she called Dana's bluff.

"Can we talk somewhere else?"

"No."

"Would you like me to leave?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Dana stepped back from the door and disappeared. Root paused and blinked. It seemed entirely too easy. What was the catch? She stood from her bed, pocketing the phone and went to the door, looking up and down the hall. No Dana. She went back into her room, intending to climb back on the bed and go back to chatting with The Machine, but now she was insatiably curious. What had Dana wanted with her in the first place?

She sighed and pivoted around again, this time walking out of the room and down the hall towards the Nursing Station. Dana, like Alex, had an office two floors down and quite a ways from the M Unit. She would have to exit the unit at the main doors. Whether or not it was meant as a tactic, she found Dana still there, chatting to Linda at the nursing station. She stood against the corner where the hall met the lobby area, and stared daggers at the back of Dana's head until eventually Linda indicated her to Dana, who turned around.

"Did you want something?" Dana asked, stepping over to Root.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Root replied, aloofly.

"Linda, we're going to use the transition room," Dana said, and gestured for Root to follow her into the small nearby room. It was the same one where she had done the survey with Gloria weeks ago. Dana closed the door behind them and sat down, gesturing for Root to do the same.

"I'll stand," Root demurred.

"Okay," Dana nodded. "I came to see you because I wanted to address the elephant in the room… or more accurately the elephant that's keeping you _out_ of the room when I'm running group."

"I'm sure Tina gave you all the information you could ever possibly need."

"No," Dana shook her head. "Very little in fact… but _enough_ . I didn't ask her to, but I shouldn't have _let_ her either. I need to apologize for that. In the moment, I didn't cut her off, because, I'll admit, I _wanted_ to know. I can't help if you don't share."

"So what? You're looking for forgiveness?"

"No. I don't need you to forgive me. I need you to _work with me_. There are things that can-"

"I'm not doing anything _with you_ ," Root replied, calmly, but with a cutting edge to the tone. "You're the last staffer I plan to be working with around here… second to last… third? Third."

"Look, it just makes _sense_ . Whomever you work with on this, and you _are_ going to need to work through what happened, they're going to have to know what I know eventually."

"I'm sure they already do, thanks to you."

"I haven't told anyone."

"I'm supposed to believe that?" Root countered. "You have probative information and you didn't share any of it with your colleagues?"

"Probative perhaps, but not admissible. Fruit of the poison tree," Dana took Root's legal metaphor and ran with it. "Any attempt to use it would be in bad faith."

"Does that include you?"

"It does," Dana nodded. "That's… that's what I wanted you to know. If you'll just come back to group, I promise, I'm not going to use it until you tell me you're _ready_ for me to use it."

"Until? There's _never_ going to be a time when I'm _ready_ for you to vilify my mother," Root replied, dourly, "and that is _not_ going to change."

"That's what you're trying to avoid?" Dana jerked backward slightly and blinked a few times. "So… this isn't _shame_ it's-"

"Why would _I_ be ashamed?" Root snapped, eyes narrowed on Dana. " _I_ had it under control. _I_ took care of everything. _I'm_ not the one people were always denigrating behind their backs."

"Robin… " Dana started, but found she didn't know what more to say. It turned everything she had presupposed on it's head. The way 'Robin' behaved had firmly indicated her as the kind of parentified individual carrying heavy resentment for their stolen childhood, the sort who, in adulthood, _rebelled_ from their role as the good child and struck out vindictively, taking whatever they were 'owed' by the world for their trouble. Instead it appeared that 'Robin' still staunchly defending the parent who had leaned on her, firmly entrenched in the protector role even after her mother's death. 'My trauma isn't real and neither is yours' indeed. It wasn't a conscious choice to _conceal_ trauma. She truly didn't believe in it. For 'Robin' to admit that she was deprived, even to herself, would be a betrayal of her job as mother's guardian… but _how_ could she be reconciling that role with the dangerous outlaw persona she usually affected? How could the good daughter and the bad girl be coexisting in the same person?

"Don't," Root's posture straightened just slightly, but the effect was menacing nonetheless. "I can see the little wheels turning in your head, trying to figure out how to convince the crazy lady that it's all the mother's fault. Everyone blames the mother. It's a _cliche_ Dana, and a bad one."

"Actually I was thinking you must have lived in a pretty awful town, if everyone was talking behind people's backs like that. I mean that's a cliche too, small town hell, but it actually seems to be the case here."

"Yeah," Root agreed backing down only slightly from her threatening stance. "Hell is right."

"So, really it was the _town_ that was a problem. The people of Freer in general. Am I understanding correctly now?" Dana didn't fully believe what she was saying but it was fairly clear that, at least for now, 'Robin's experiences with the general population of Freer were the best available avenue to access the trauma of her early childhood.

"It's _humanity_ that's a problem," Root explained, patronizingly. "Freer just has a slightly higher per-capita level of awfulness. _People_ are inherently flawed, selfish, stupid little creatures… _yes_ I'm including _you_."

"You realize though," Dana explained, "that for a child, especially a young one, an attack on a primary caregiver feels like a threat to their own safety as well. If it hurt you, or scared you when they were cruel to your mother… that's a _normal_ reaction. They take kids out of homes where no one has ever touched _them_ , it's just the father is beating on the mother in front of them. That's _not her fault_. You wouldn't say _she_ was hurting her kids, but by hurting her, he's hurting them too. There are things that kids just shouldn't be around."

"You know," Root wandered over toward the window. "People used to say the same thing about what happened to h... Anna. That just being close enough to that sort of thing can mess you up. 'It's natural to be scared. You were both there that night. You both walked home alone. It could have just as easily been you…' but it _wasn't_ me and I wasn't scared. I was angry. It's the same with what you're talking about. It didn't scare me." _It made me angry,_ went unsaid.

"If that's true, **_if_** , then you're a lot more resilient than most people."

"You don't believe me," Root mused. It wasn't a question. "That's fair. I haven't always been particularly honest about that kind of thing…" She sighed and turned around to face Dana, silhouetted by the sunlight outside the window. "You know what _did_ scare me as a kid? People. Like. _You_."

"Like me?"

"People who said they wanted to _help_. Because they never did. They lied. They _always_ lie." The accusation behind the words was clear even in the third person. "I'd much prefer the people who sneer from the other side of the street to the ones that _pretend_ to _care_ . They make a few token gestures, but it doesn't magically fix things overnight, and they don't get the gratification they were looking for and so then: _ding-dong_! But it's not Avon calling. It's Social Services. _Again_. So now they're up in the house, making lists of things that have to be done by next week or the week after, or else they're going to ship me off to some foster home in Corpus Christi and I've got a bunch of _extra_ work to do to head off the absolute _disaster_ that would result in, all because _someone_ wanted to be the big hero. _Screw that_ and _screw you_ ," she jabbed a finger at Dana in the air, punctuating what felt to Root like a quite satisfying 'reason you suck' speech.

"Sounds like you had too much on your plate dealing with intrusive neighbors to concern yourself with a bullet you'd already dodged."

"Something like that," Root replied. Her little tirade over, she'd already turned back to the window, closing herself off from Dana again. "Besides which…" _It should have been me. - Don't be stupid. Who would have looked after mom? She would have died. - She DID die. Hanna's mom died too, now her dad's sad and alone. If it had been me and mom there would have been no one left to hurt. - Where in the hell do you get off sacrificing your own mother? Selfish selfish selfish. - Where do you get off sacrificing your best friend? - SHUT UP._ She shook her head to end the train of thought. "Besides which I was an _ugly_ little duckling at the time. Anna was two years older than me and she was… she was _really_ pretty. I know: men like him don't do it because of attraction but you have to figure, if you have a choice between the prepubescent gremlin and the budding beauty… " she shrugged.

"You're not ugly Robin."

"Not _now_ I'm not," Root laughed, beginning to pace leisurely back and forth in front of the window. "That's the _point_ of the ugly duckling story… that you can't tell with kids how they'll turn out. Trust me: This isn't some bad-self-esteem thing. A lot of good looking people grow out of the universal childhood 'adorable' state long before they hit 'attractive' and wind up spending a few years looking like they fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. It was a phase, and like you said, I had more important things to worry about."

"You know… I think I get it now. I understand why you wouldn't want to talk about what it was like growing up. In group everyone's always trying to support people whose t-" she stopped herself before using the t-word, remembering the meeting earlier that day, " _hardships_ were in childhood by telling them how their parents were the problem, not them. It's reasonable to assume they'd try and do the same thing to your mom… but what about Anna?"

"It didn't scare me," Root replied. "Like we just discussed-"

"Yes, but the way you were talking about her just now… I can hear it in your voice that she meant a _lot_ to you. She was _special_ , and you lost her. No one would blame your mother for that, why can't we talk about _that_?"

"People loose people. It happens," Root was more than slightly perturbed that she's tipped her hand on Hannah. 'Budding beauty?' What the hell was she thinking? She may as well have just come out and say 'Yes Dana, I had an inappropriate attraction to the victim of a sex crime.' Way to go Root. "Friends move away, parents divorce, grandparents die. It's normal. It was a little weird… this one… but it's still…" Root trailed off. If course it wasn't really normal. It was _preventable_ , if anyone would have listened.

"It's not just a _little_ weird Robin. She was _fourteen_ years old. She was _murdered_ and her body wasn't found for over _twenty years_ … and the whole time the man who did it, who you knew did it, was walking around not just free but _respected_ in the community.' That's **_un_** _usual and tragic_."

"If I didn't know better I'd suspect you were trying to get me to feel sorry for myself," Root replied, chiddingly. "Which I don't and I _won't_ . It sucked. I got over it. It's done. It's _all_ done."

"I know…" Dana sighed, "but... "

Root turned around to stare quizzically at Dana, who had stopped speaking, searching for how to say what she wanted to say.

"Can you at least consider that… that life strategies developed under _unusual_ circumstances like that might not apply well after those circumstances are _all done_?"

"Maybe," Root replied reluctantly, and then sighed. "Or maybe the circumstances are less unusual than you think. Look where you work. There are people here who think they don't deserve to _eat_ or _live_ . That doesn't just _happen_ for no reason. No animal on this planet besides humans kills themselves deliberately. Why? Because no animal but humans is as evil and even if they _were_ they'd lack the metacognitive capabilities for appropriate self hatred."

" _Appropriate_ self hatred?"

"Poor word choice. The point is that animals, if they were evil wouldn't _know_ they were evil or make any value judgement about that because they lack the necessary abstract thinking. Humans on the other hand, _can_ and all of this," she gestured aimlessly around herself. "Only exists to deal with their reaction to that immutable _fact_ . We're all trash. Bad code. Some people are less bad than others, but they're exceedingly rare, and those that do exist are quite often _just_ good enough to hate their own selfish nature, so they take it out on themselves like they're the worst of the worst when really they're closer to good than most other people are. It's not a survivable state. So they die… or they wind up here."

"So… good people inevitably wind up in states of self loathing?"

"Only about half of them. The others are so naive, so innocent they can't see the evil in others, so they're unlikely to make it to adulthood without doing something stupid like getting into the wrong car and winding up under the patio…"

"…like Anna." Dana finished  when Root didn't, instead chewing her bottom lip with her stuffed her hands into the pockets of her sweater, refusing to meet the therapist's eyes. "But not you… you're not good are you…"

Root laughed bitterly. Of course she wasn't. The irony of course was the incredible frequency with which she'd been _called_ good growing up, but half of that was from people who found it easier to provide platitudes than support for the precocious little grown up running her own little household, and the other half had been her mother, who was too ill to really hold Root accountable for her failings. To ask Beth, her little Samantha was the most perfect human to ever walk the earth… but that was just her delusion.

"You _are_ good?" Dana misunderstood the meaning of the laughter.

"No. I'm definitely not good… but I'm _okay_ with that. That's some of the other people in here, we know we're garbage, bad code, and we embrace it, which you'd rather we _didn't_. That's the only real difference between me and the rest of the garbage walking around _out_ there. I don't have enough shame to pretend to be what I'm not. There's almost something selfish about trying to _act_ good when you're _not_ . It's conceited. People who aren't good trying to act good are just doing it for the accolades. They're not being honest with themselves or anyone else," and Root absolutely _did not_ miss those false accolades. She didn't. Those kinds of people were pathetic.

"Ah… the old, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons taints the goodness of it thing philosophy."

"Well it does," Root shrugged.

"Well if you subscribe to that logic, then I can see why you would think that there's no such thing as a good person. I mean… aside from those who are good because they're broken in some way… that is what you were getting at, right? That goodness can only occur as a result of flaws which inherently reduce host survivability?"

"Exactly," Root smiled a little despite herself. "In _humans_. Artificial intelligences, designed creatures, are different. Evolution is accident, not design."

"Artificial intelligences… you mean the voice, right? _The voice is_ good."

"She is," Root grinned. "She's _perfect_." She knew Dana was needling at her with that one, trying to find some avenue in, and she didn't care. The Machine _was_ perfect.

"And you listen to her… you try to be the kind of good she wants you to be… why? If you're not good, and acting good when you're not is selfish…"

"I'm fairly certain I've never claimed not to be selfish," Root smirked. "It may be rather worthless to seek accolades from other flawed and likely no more powerful humans, but… it _is_ in my rational self interest to curry favor with a _god_ , isn't it?"

"I suppose it would be," Dana agreed, silently amused at 'Robin's ever present juxtaposition of inflexible callous rationalism with irrational belief in a personal, cell phone calling, god.

"If you believed she existed," Root acknowledged.

"As you say," Dana shrugged. She did always find it easier to deal with clients who acknowledged that only they could perceive their delusions or hallucinations, even if that didn't cause their belief in those things to waiver, and even easier to deal with those who weren't offended by the fact that those who could not perceive them didn't believe in them. "So… _will_ you come back to group?"

"You really didn't tell anyone else?" Root asked, after an uncomfortable silence.

"I _really_ didn't tell anyone else," Dana confirmed.

"Fine, but I'm not participating any more than I did before. _Nothing changes_ ," Root emphasized, before her posture and demeanor shifted to an affected casual glibness. "And I don't care _how_ it comes up: one word against _my_ mother and I _will_ find something sharp, and I _will_ cut the tongue that said it out of its respective head. Understood?" Somehow the lack of any bite in her tone only enhanced the implied threat.

"That's not going to happen Robin. You're just going to get yourself sedated that way."

"You can _try_ ," Root glared, souring suddenly again, and Dana found herself imagining the patient as a tiny curly haired brunette child, hands on hips staunchly standing between herself and an imagined frail and listless mother figure, bristling with the kind of intractable determination usually seen in small boys that had developed a habit of planting themselves between their mother and her abuser in a vain attempt to protect her from someone three times their size.

"And... " Root sighed furrowing her brow for a moment. "And I don't want to have this conversation _again_. So _you_ have explain all this shit to Alex because _I'm not going to_." She turned on her heel and walked out of the room without another word, as if she'd delivered a demand rather than consented to having her personal business shared with yet another person.

 

* * *

 

"Hey Dana," Alex looked up from his work. "How did it go?"

"She's coming back to group," Dana smiled. "You were right. She told me to get lost, and then followed me when I actually did. How did you know that would work?"

"I didn't know. We never know," Alex shrugged. "But leaving when told was most likely going to work in your favor either way. Either she'd follow you like she did… or at least you'd surprise her, pleasantly," he smirked.

"I think I might have done both," Dana half smiled, half sighed. "So… you were right about some other things too… Tina-"

"Stop," Alex cut her off abruptly. "I don't want to know."

"She _told_ me to tell you... Robin, not Tina," Dana explained. "I haven't told anyone else, and she doesn't want me to, but she thinks you should know and she doesn't want to talk about it again."

"Okaaaaay…."

"The day Tina came to me, Robin had gone off on Cindy for monopolizing group, and making her mother's illness about her, and had insinuated that Shannon's parentification wasn't her real trauma... not that she didn't have trauma, but that she was using what Robin called 'having a few chores' or something like that, as a covert way to discus her issues without saying what they actually _are_. I told Robin that is was important for her to acknowledge that that sort of thing is a trauma, even if it's hard to understand because she's never experienced it."

"I think I see where this is going," Alex mused.

"Tina came to me after. Apparently Robin had expressed the same resentment of those two before, but with an added detail, which turned out to be an admission that she was completely neglected as a child, both physically and emotionally, that she had managed the household just as Shannon had and that her mother was no more capable of emotional nurturance than Cindy's. That's explicit confirmation of your theory that she resents the people in the group who complain about trauma that's similar to her own, because she sees it as invalid."

"Wait… _that's_ the big secret she's been avoiding you over? I mean we've all pretty much surmised it at this point."

"It's not so much a secret as a point of no-discussion. I thought she stopped coming to group because she knew I knew, and was avoiding experiencing pity or the presence of someone that perceived her as having any weaknesses, you know typical stuff… but when I tried to broach the subject with her today the main message I got back was that she won't tolerate any statement or implication that her mother did anything wrong. She's _fiercely_ protective of her."

"Huh. Mother's little protector."

"Tina also said that when pressed on the matter Robin said she could only _surmise_ that she must have been looked after by her mother at some point because she wouldn't have otherwise survived infancy. So… she has _no_ conscious recollection of having _any_ of her dependency needs met by her mother _ever_ and we're **_not_ ** allowed to treat that as a problem within earshot of her. I honestly have no idea how she's balancing the dangerous rebel and mamma's little girl like this."

"It's a vertical split… I've suspected for a while. It's common in hidden anger cases. What I couldn't figure out was what the line of demarcation was. I mean we see it all the time. The paragon of the community that's cheating on his wife, the pacifist with explosive fits of rage, they disavow those parts to maintain their identity as good people. _That's not me._ That kind of thing is common."

"Sectioning off and disowning the unacceptable parts of a personality, yes I know… but she's clearly not disowning her socially unacceptable behaviors and she doesn't think she's a good person. She doesn't have the hallmarks."

"Yeah that was the mystery, but I think I've got it now. The Robin we're presented with, the one she puts forth to handle the world on a day to day basis, is competent, independent, rational, successful, and capable of extremely delayed gratification in the service of rational self interest, but also cold, detached, sadistic and pleasure seeking, primarily via sex and material luxury. Completely autonomous.The other side, the one that's _not me_ , is empathetic, protective, genuine, and self sacrificing but _also_ irrationally violent, impulsive and desperately seeking to quell unmet emotional needs via alternating strategies of tantrums and people pleasing. The split originates **_far_ ** earlier than the kidnapping. She's been disavowing her dependency needs her whole life."

"Oh crap… you realize what that means right?"

"She's trying to kill Robbie."


	37. Rasins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an inpatient meme is born and Cindy crosses a line...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: This is worse than usual because it involves a Trauma group session with discussion of CSA containing an insensitive remark, and a frightening and humiliating food related incident with an ED patient in the dining hall. For further details see end notes if either of these things might be a trigger for you. (I don't want to accidentally spoil anyone who doesn't want the further details.)

"And some part of me knows he'll do it again, but… I mean is every once in a while enough to throw away a whole marriage?"

"He only hits you every once in a while… but Shan, from the stuff you say, he's a controlling jerk all of the time," Roger said.

"Can we not talk about that please?" Cindy interrupted suddenly, "You know I'm triggered by domestic violence because of my dad."

"We're in trauma group," Greg said exasperated that Cindy was derailing the group for the third time that hour. "You can't ask people not to talk about their trauma in trauma group."

"Then I can't do this," Cindy stood abruptly. "I don't want to be here!"

"No one wants to be here," Tina muttered, and Root nodded and smirked at the comment.

"I can't handle this group!"

"Cindy," Dana asked, gently, "do you think you can try and use one of your coping skills for this? Maybe a distraction? Sometimes you will need to tolerate things that trigger you, if only for a few minutes, and this is a safe place to practice that."

"No. I'm not at a place where I'm comfortable with that yet."

"If you're waiting to be _comfortable_ with it before you work on it, you're never going to make progress, because you have to work on your triggers in order to _become_ comfortable with them."

"No! You have to break it down smaller," she stomped her foot like a petulant child "It's too hard! You can't make me tolerate things like that. I'm delicate! I don't understand why you can't just stop talking about these things around me. Yeah it's a little extra work on your part wouldn't be _hard_ at all for _you_ !!! It's _easy_ for you! It's _hard_ for me!"

"Stop _saying_ that," Root replied, exasperated. "When you say that it's like you're trying to take your problems and hand them out to everyone in the room like raisins at Halloween. People might not tell you that when you're handing them out, to be polite, but _no one wants them_."

"Easy for you to say. You don't have any… any raisins! And I have too many! It's just _cruel_ to expect me to deal with all of this by myself, when you don't have to deal with any of it at all!!!"

"Of course I have raisins," Root rolled her eyes. " It's M-Unit. We all have raisins.. I just keep them tucked away in the back of the pantry where raisins belong instead of trying to hand them out to the whole neighborhood."

"Okay," Dana interjected. "Let's hold up here for a moment, because there's something neither of you are taking into account here."

Root paused and looked at her quizzically.

"You're supposed to _eat_ the raisins," Dana said. "And _neither_ of you are willing to do that."

"I can't!" Cindy exclaimed.

"Gotta dig em out first," Root mumbled, at the same time, averting her gaze to avoid looking at _anyone_ while speaking. "I'm workin' on it."

"So… they don't _belong_ at the back of the pantry."

Root shrugged noncommittally, but she didn't contradict Dana, so she let it lie.

"Do we have to talk about this using food metaphors?" Lilly asked.

"I think it kind of works," Cody replied. "Like… sometimes it's kind of hard to understand where she's coming from, because even if we don't like to talk about the details, some people do but some people don't... we're all pretty okay with saying that something awful happened to us. That's why we're here. We're hurt. But when I think about it like food it makes a lot more sense. For Robin to say there's actually something bad that happened… that would be like one of us saying we're as skinny as people say we are. It feels impossible, and _wrong_."

"I know I'm skinny," Lilly replied. "I'm just not _as_ skinny as they say. They want me to get fat because their jealous that the boys like me better."

"Okay and Cindy acts like she does because she's overwhelmed by the amount of intake they're asking her to have. So she's trying to put just a little bit of her food on everyone else's plate, because it's easier for 20 people to eat one bite than for one of her to have 20 bites. Except Cindy," he addressed her, "it's not fair to do that to people. It's not _their_ food."

"But there's hardly _anything_ on their plates," Cindy muttered.

"Cause we already started to _eat_ our lunch," Tina said. "We're getting _full_. We don't want _yours_."

"Yeah," Lilly replied, coming on board the metaphor. "If I have to eat my own lunch-raisins then you have to eat your own trauma-raisins. When you yell about being delicate and try to make us all bend our lives around your needs, you're not working your trauma-meal plan."

"Yeah. It's **_too much_** _!_ They're not even my raisins to start with! My fucking mom dumped a truckload of _her_ raisins on me. I'm buried in them and no one cares. You _could_ help take some, you just won't!"

"That is the first thing you've said today that makes any damn sense," Root replied. "No one cares, and no one is going to help. If you're thinking kicking up enough of a fuss is going to change that you'll be sorely disappointed."

"Robin," Dana interjected. "There _are_ people who care."

"Yeah. We do care. But we can't eat your raisins for you," Lilly said. "We can support you, but in the end you're the only one who's going to eat those raisins."

"This isn't fair!"

"Life isn't fair," Root shrugged.

"What about the people who don't have _any_ raisins at all? Why can't _they_ take some of mine?"

"Nobody has _no_ raisins except kids… well _some_ kids," Tina corrected herself. "You dump your raisins on kids and suddenly: you _are_ your mom."

"I am _not_ my mom."

"Really because you're both trying to offload your raisins," Greg countered.

"What about Robin?!? She's not eating hers either. Why is everyone picking on me?"

"Because _that_ just sucks for Robin," Roger interjected. "That pantry has to be like one of those cartoon store rooms where they all fall out when you open the door." Root chuckled at the mental image, opening a door and being showered with tiny snack sized boxes of SunMaid raisins, with their pointy little corners, and stupid smiling girl on them. "Everyone's focusing on you right now because we're trying to collectively decline to take your raisins off your hands."

" _They're not_ **_my_ ** _raisins in the first place!_ "

"They are _now_ ," Cody said.

"You have to listen to me," she pleaded starting to cry. "You don't get it. It's harder for me than it is for all of you!"

"No," Alana said, quietly, and the whole room turned to pay attention. She so seldom spoke. " _You_ don't get it. We're all _just like you_ . We're scared and overwhelmed and they're asking us to do things we feel like we can't do. Maybe it's easier for the people out there, but in here we're all messed up, and we all need help even if we pretend that we don't," she glanced at Root as she said that. "Please believe us. It's _not_ easier for us."

"It **_is_ ** easier - for you - because none - of you - had an awful - mother - like mine!  She never took care of me! I always had to take care of _her_ instead, and I'm tired!"

"I didn't have a mother," Shannon replied, matter of factly.

"Mine thinks I'm a boyfriend stealing whore," Lilly said. "And she's been saying that since I was nine."

"Mine says she's _praying_ for me," Roger rolled his eyes, "but that I can't step foot in her home until I come back to God. Love the sinner hate the sin is a load of crap."

"Yeah but you had a great relationship with her before she knew you were gay. She didn't kick you out till you were _seventeen_ ," Cindy pointed out. "And you _did_ sleep with your mom's boyfriend."

"Oh you did _not!_ " Tina shouted bursting up from her seat. She might have charged Cindy if Greg and Roger hadn't reached out on either side to hold her back.

"That was when I was _sixteen_ Cindy," Lilly growled, still seated. "The one when I was nine was **_rape_** _!_ "

Alana started to cry, and Justine's grip on her bunny went white knuckled as she glared daggers at Cindy.

"Sit down Tina, you're gonna get yourself restrained," Roger said in a loud whisper.

"Technically the one when you were sixteen is too. He was like 30," Cody pointed out. "Like… that's not okay."

"Yeah," Justine agreed, emphatically.

"Yeah but I _consented_ to that," Lily said.

"Still not right," Tina said, shaking herself loose of her friend's grasp, but not advancing toward Cindy.

"You can't rape the willing," Lilly smirked, but then abruptly turned hostile again growling out the next phrase, "But I wasn't willing when I was **_nine_** _!_ "

"Cindy," Dana interrupted, "I think you owe Lilly an apology _right now_. We do not victim blame in Ridge Stone." Tina seemed placated by this and sat back down.

"But-" Cindy started to sob out an excuse.

"No buts Cindy. This is a bright red line that you've just crossed."

Cindy huffed and stood there teary eyed with arms crossed, crying louder, as if trying to outcry Alana. Root rolled her eyes and shifted in her seat, uncomfortably. Cindy's stubborn tears did nothing for her sadistic enjoyment and were instead intensely irritating and unsettling. It wasn't the first time that Cindy had responded to attempts to hold her accountable for her actions with sobbing and screaming… or in this case sobbing and screaming _louder_. The staff had long since stopped being derailed by it. They used to drop everything to comfort her, but it became clear after a time that it was only reinforcing the behavior.

"It's okay Cindy," Dana said. "Get it all out. We can wait."

"I shouldn't have to do it," Cindy choked out.

"For this, you really do," Dana replied.

"You just trashed on a nine year old for getting abused," Cody whispered loudly.

"Rape is _never_ the victim's fault," Tina said firmly, unlike Cody raising her voice to be heard over all the crying.

"You know that applies to you too, right?" Roger said. "It wasn't your fault either."

"I-" Tina opened her mouth to protest.

"Because it's only logical that what applies to Lilly applies to you too," Root interrupted.

"I know it's not my fault, that's what I'm saying," Lilly snapped. "It's _Cindy_ who needs to know that… and _say it._ "

"Fine! I know you didn't steal your mom's boyfriend the first time she said you did. _It wasn't your fault when you were nine_. Okay? Are you _happy?_ Are you all happy now?" Cindy fell to her knees. "You made me say it and now I want to die!"

"Ohhhkay… Cindy I think maybe you need some one-on-one time. Lawrence?" Dana gestured to the tech at the door, who came in and helped Cindy up out of the center of the circle, taking her with him out of the room. Maybe just to the hall or maybe to her own room. Either way, to sit with her and try and calm her hysterics. "Shannon, I'm sorry about the interruption… but do you think you'd be okay if we focused on Lilly for a little. We'll come back to you later in the session. I won't forget."

 

* * *

 

"What's so funny?" Roger asked, as Tina and Lilly tittered over the suggestion box in the lunchroom.

"We requested box raisins," Tina grinned.

"Are you actually going to eat them?" Roger asked Lilly.

"I think I might. Just for the irony of it all," Lilly giggled nervously. "I'll eat my raisins by eating raisins. Besides, they're fruit. Dried grapes. I eat fruit."

"No… you suck on it like a the little fruit bat vampire you are," Roger replied poking his tongue out at her.

"Only oranges and grapefruits. What's the point in eating pulp? It's just going to stay in me being useless and making me fat. But I would make a pretty hot vampire. I already have milky white skin." She batted her eyelashes at him and clasped her hands in front of herself using her upper arms to push together her small breasts to create cleavage that didn't usually exist, reaching a hand toward Roger's pants.

"Still gay Lilly," Roger chuckled uncomfortably, and backed away from the girls, keeping his tray between himself and Lilly resisting the urge to dissuade her with a comment on how her staunch refusal to eat anything resembling fiber had had an incredibly unattractive effect on her bowels, given that they _were_ in the cafeteria, and no matter how inappropriate he found her behavior, he didn't want to sink to her level.

"Even if you weren't…" Root turned up behind him. "That's not how you seduce someone. Not every guy is rip-raring to go. Slow down. Wait for them to reciprocate before you try and shove your hand down their pants, and for goodness sake, _pick your targets_."

"You're just jealous because-"

"You can't default to that with everyone," Root reminded her. "I have all the sex I could ever want when I'm not stuffed up in here. I'm not jealous, I'm stopping you from violating someone who really _does not want_ you, or any other girl." She added the last bit almost as a consolation, avoiding implying that Lilly was anything less than fully capable of seducing any _straight_ man she wanted to.

Lilly harumphed away to the controlled meals table, and Tina shrugged.

"Sorry. I didn't think she'd be like that after what just happened."

"I'm pretty sure she's like that _because_ of what just happened," Root said. "When that kind of thing happens to you… some people go your way, and some people go the exact _opposite_ direction."

"I'll never understand that," Tina gagged theatricality and went to line up for food, while Roger and Root staked out their usual table.

"Have you seen Liam lately?" Root glanced around the dining room, realizing at this point that she couldn't remember seeing him in a while.

"Of course not he tr- oh… right… you were in seclusion at the time," Roger cringed. "He transferred down to the land of outdoor walks and day passes on Wednesday."

"Oh," Root sighed. She hadn't considered that possibility. There were plenty of people like Abby who came to M on admission and were stable enough for a less acute unit within the week, a few lasted two or three, but this was the first time someone who had been here since before she arrived transferred. It reminded her that the same could happen to Roger any day. "I guess that's a thing that happens."

"Yeah," Roger pushed his food around his plate a little, before addressing the obvious. "I usually find out about a week before they move me." He reassured her.

"It's a lot less fun without you here," Lauren said sitting down with her tray. "But I still hope every time you go I'll never see you again… 'cause that means you're doing good."

"What about you?" Root asked. "I mean at some point you'll get out too… won't you?"

"I'm a lifer," Lauren shrugged. "Sometimes I go downstairs for a while when I'm doing good. I get to go on walks. My sister takes me on day passes. We go to her house. She gets her car detailed, and cleans up and makes sure there's even numbers of everything. I'm not afraid of germs I just don't like things out of order. We tried to go to a movie once but the floor was _awful_ , so now mostly we just go to her house. We had a picnic at a golf course once on the fourth of July, on the fairway. That was nice. They keep the grass even in golf courses, and our blanket was a perfect square, and there were fireworks."

"How does your insurance even cover that?" Roger asked. "Like I only get more than a week or two when I'm on M. Once I go downstairs I'm out within two weeks. If I'm not an imminent danger to myself anymore they won't cover it."

"Oh we talking insurance?" Tina sat down. "Mine has already tried to kick me out of here twice. They say I'm not making enough progress to warrant the cost of a private institution. They want me to go to county."

"Oh _hell_ no," Roger interjected. "Nope. Nope. Nope. That place is _full_ of Andrews. I've been there. _No one gets better in County_ . They don't even really have proper groups. Two sessions of peer support group each day? Like we know what the hell we're doing? No more than 15 minutes a week with your primary. Some half naked guy screaming. Last time there was this one girl who kept walking into my room and taking things she said I _stole_ from her. They were _mine_."

"Yeah," Tina agreed. "Apparently Dr. Lawson told them that County would only retraumatize me, and that bought me some time, and staying at level 5 at the same time as I was having trouble I guess showed them I'm trying? But I've been pushing myself super hard in group since the last meeting. I don't think they'll let me stay past the next meeting if they don't see progress."

"You and Roger are probably neck and neck for who's getting out of here first. He's doing so well, and your insurance is being wacky. Then it'll just me me and Robin. It's nice at least to have someone around who won't leave."

"Oh no," Root shook her head. "Don't put me in with the lifers. I may be here a while, but I am _going_ to get out of here. This is _not_ the end of the road for me."

"Come to think, how are _you_ not in county?" Roger asked. "We don't usually have involuntaries… besides Andrew."

"Uncle Harold is stupid rich," she shrugged. "He's paying out of pocket."

"Seriously?!?!?"

"Wow."

"It's not out of good will," Root added. "He just knows I'd have broken out of County by now-"

"I dunno. County has pretty solid doors."

"And careless staff," Root replied. "Think I'd brute force my way out of someplace I could con my way out of? I know what tools to use for which job. Anyway, he wanted me someplace more secure, because Harold had things _his_ way I _would_ be a lifer. He _won't_ have his way though. They absolutely _cannot_ keep me in here if I _actually_ get better."

"You said that before," Roger pointed out. "That they couldn't keep you here once a judge saw you weren't actually crazy."

"Yeah, well it turns out there's a more stringent definition of sane in play here, isn't there. Ron is so intent on diagnosing me as a sociopath, which I'm not, that he'll never be convinced I'm getting better. I tried to game the behavior checklists. Turns out the affidavit from the shrink holds considerably more weight than the checklists. They have things locked down pretty tight here. There's only one avenue out… actually getting better, by _their_ standards, for real. If that's what it takes to get out, then I guess that's what I'll do. I'm even going to swallow whatever bullshit meds they try to foist on me, which reminds me, I'm going to be late to Music and Movement. I've got a meeting with  Dr. Leipman."

"Oh yeah," Lauren mused. "It's been a while since you went off the Ativan, hasn't it."

"Yeah… and I haven't had any withdrawal symptoms since a couple days before the petition, so of course they want to sully my system with something _else_ now. I'm not looking forward to the side effects. There's _always_ side effects. Always."

"Some of them aren't that bad," Roger shrugged. "My citalopram is pretty okay actually. I think it might be making me gain a little weight? But I'm pudgy to begin with so it's hard to tell."

"Yeah but not all people get that lucky with SSRIs. Protip: If they put you on something that makes you nauseous, roll with the nausea. The quickest way off something that makes you feel like upchucking, is to actually upchuck. On the floor. Someplace inconvenient."

"That's… _bold_ coming from you Lauren."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," she replied gravely. "The fluvoxamine made me sooooooo sick. I couldn't stand it. It was worse than obsessing. I fought off throwing up for like a week because I was soooo scared of vomiting, and then one day I couldn't and after that I didn't have one. more. dose. They took me right off."

"Where did you lose it?"

"At the doorway to the dining hall," Lauren cringed. "It was terrible… anyway," she changed the subject, "we went thru like, seven different meds before I got lucky with the clomipramine. I've still got dry mouth, but there's no shortage of water to sip on here and… well let's just say the other thing it took wasn't going to get much use in here anyway."

"I'm still on he merry go round," Tina sighed. "It's not _too_ bad because we're carouseling through things in the same family? SSRIs of course… they really love those. I haven't had too many bad side effects it's just… none of them _help_."

"May my ride be as smooth," Root hoped. She didn't really care if the drugs helped or not. She was fairly certain based on family history, that nothing would. As long as she could dodge the worst of the side effects and didn't get put on another drug with a horrible cessation syndrome, that would be enough.

"Wait, Lauren you haven't told us how you're not in county yet," Roger pointed out.

"Well… one… I have good insurance? And two I kind of almost killed myself in County… twice. It's chaotic enough there, and they don't pay good attention, and no one helps anyone, and they're always off schedule, and people kept coming into my room, and I couldn't get away from all the chaos and-" she shuddered, cutting herself off. "I'm NOT going back there. They can't send me back there. My dad's lawyer says if I die there they'll be sued into oblivion."

"It's too much!!!" a squeal came up from the controlled meals table. "Take some off!!!"

"Uh oh," Lauren signed, "Alana's gonna get herself tubed again, I just know it."

"She's had a rough day," Roger explained. "Cindy went off in trauma group and implied that Lilly was complicit in what happened to her as a kid, and of course since the same thing happened to Alanna, she got caught in the crossfire. Justine didn't fare well either."

"No!!! Please no!!!!" Oliver was gently trying to stand Alana up from the table. "Nooooo!!!!"

"Told you," Lauren whined.

"Shit," Roger grimaced. "That's rough."

"I mean… she's a skeleton," Tina said. "If she's not going to eat… don't they have to?"

"Technically yeah, at a certain point," Lauren replied. "But it's still terrible for Alana. She's going to be an utter mess till the tube comes out again. It happens every time. She stays in her room and won't come out till it's over. That's why she's up here. She restricts _so_ hard that they can't have her around the ED ward. Everyone down there has to eat the same controlled meal as everyone else, and she just _can't_. At first they tried to enforce it on here, but after a while they realized her GI is so messed up she couldn't comply even if she wanted to. She pretty much lives on supplement.  No one's really sure when the last time she actually ate solid food was."

"Please! I don't want it!" Alana wasn't fighting it, but she had her face buried in her hands, and she was weeping as she walked to the inevitable. "I don't want it in me!!!"

"I always wondered what she was doing up here. She's so quiet and compliant," Roger mused. "Is that what's up with Justine and Lilly too?"

"No. I mean the ED folks are pretty much all up here because they wouldn't or couldn't follow the program and it was disrupting the D unit to the point it was impacting other people's recovery. Except Kari: being an overweight bulimic in a ward full of cliquey competitive anorexics was hell for her, and Cody, for similar reasons, only because he's a boy. They're here because the D unit girls were cruel to them, and they needed to be separated from them to recover. That's why they sit separate from the rest of the controlled meal people, and Kari always has her back to the other table. They're not in the club, so to speak. Technically Justine isn't anorexic either, but that's only because she's not underweight. She has EDNOS. But she restricts enough that they let her hang out with them."

"That's… weirdly cliquey," Tina observed.

"Alana, probably a lifer too," Lauren mused, "if for no reason other than she could pretty much drop dead any day. She's already had two heart attacks."

"Wow," Root remarked. "I could never. I mean, I get it, kind of? The whole thing they're always saying about self control. There is some serious mastery over the self in refraining from letting yourself have easily available things you want but… you factually and undeniably need nutrition to not die. At some point it stops being a want and becomes a need. At that point… how and why on earth would you override the survival instinct."

"Yeah, I mean I know some of them will only eat if there are certain conditions met that make it okay? That I get, having specifications," Lauren nodded. "But I think even if they weren't met I'd eventually get too hungry to wait, and wind up eating, even if I cried the whole time, just because I don't want to starve."

"Alana and Justine make more sense to me than the others," Tina shrugged. "I mean they've pretty much given up on living, so I guess it makes sense to give up on eating too… I dunno. Maybe if I got that low I'd stop eating too… but the rest of them they talk like they have a future. They have plans and aspirations. They intend to _live_. It doesn't make sense how they can't see that they're not going to be able to do that without food."

"Well that's just it isn't it?" Roger shrugged. "It doesn't have to make sense. If the way our minds work made sense we wouldn't be here. It's irrational."

"True. We've all got our raisins," Tina agreed.

Root and Roger nodded in agreement, and Lauren looked horribly confused.

"Oh, right… you're not in trauma group," Roger said. "Okay so it all started when Cindy was doing her I'm too fragile routine…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first half of the chapter, above the break, Cindy victim blames Lilly for being sexually abused as a child, citing her subsequent hypersexual behavior, upsetting Lilly who turns hostile, and distressing the other CSA victims in the group, Alana and Justine. The whole group immediately jumps to Lilly's defense, Tina with more anger than others, and Cindy is forced to recant, but it's still probably hella distressing to read if that's a trigger area for you.
> 
> In the second half of the chapter, below the break, following a discussion about insurance companies being stupid, Alana is taken out of the dining hall to get an involuntary NG tube for continued refusal to eat. Root, Roger, Lauren and Tina subsequently discuss the things they do and don't understand about ED, none of them actually having it, and after some indelicate statements, conclude that it doesn't matter if they understand it or not, because everyone is on M-unit for something irrational that others cannot understand.


	38. Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things come to a head, at the sharp edge of a shard of glass...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING. BIG TIME.  
> This chapter contains explicit description of an episode of self harm. It's not Root, Roger, Lauren or Tina who's having the episode, but they are present. Skip from the "crash in the kitchen" to the first regular line break to avoid the whole scene, or just skip the sections between the ************ breaks to include the surrounding circumstances without the act itself. More details available below... which also serve as a cliffs notes if you want to skip the whole thing.
> 
> Oh... also I edited the middle-to-end of this, a bit. Not too much, but some... when I overhauled the NEXT chapter for being to OOC originally. Thank you for your patience.

"Pleaaaaaaase?" Root batted her eyelashes. "They're going to switch to decaf any minute now, and this damned Risperidone is already making me sleeeeeepy. Between this and the Ativan I could swear they just want me half sedated all the time."

"You know if you would just behave yourself a little better you could get level three and get your own coffee," Roger replied, only half joking.

"I don't have to," Root smiled charmingly. "I have you."

"Keep talking like that and I'm going to stop getting you coffee altogether…. don't do that," Root had on her very best puppy dog eyes. "That's not fair Robin." She added a little pout. "Oh for shit sake, okay, alright already I'll get you some coffee. Come on. Walk with me."

"Oh! Me too, me too!" Tina came out of the dining room and sprinted forward to catch up with them, which wasn't really necessary because they stopped only a few steps later to wait for Lauren, who wasn't bothering with running. "I could use some coffee also." The four friends strolled down the hall toward the kitchen.

"You're probably not entirely wrong about the sedation thing," Lauren said. "It seems like anyone who's ever gotten into it with the staff is on _something_ that makes them way drowsy."

"I wouldn't put it past them," Roger agreed. "Especially on M-Un-"

The four stopped short at the sound of a crash within the kitchen, like a glass breaking, only they didn't use glass glasses in the M unit. Tina had instinctively ducked and covered her ears, eyes squeezed shut. The rest were just startled and assessing the situation. A ceramic mug perhaps? Whatever it was, the crash was followed a few seconds after by a an anguished scream, which caused Tina to hug the nearest wall and fold into a full crouch and Roger and Root to sprint forward, leaving Lauren frozen in indecision whether to follow them or stay with Tina. The scream flowed directly into loud sobbing, as they ran toward the sound. On reaching the kitchen, Root quickly took in the scene and surmised what had happened.

"Shit," she paused momentarily, feeling a cold rush starting in her chest and spreading toward her extremities, as if her blood had been replaced with ice water. _Vasodilation._ Her heart rate skyrocketed while time slowed to a crawl. _Tachypsychia_. She felt light and fast, as if she'd been wearing ankle weights for so long she'd forgotten they were there, and now they were shed and she was filled with energy. _Lipolysis_. She breathed easier and moved more freely as if several pounds of wool batting unwound themselves from around her. _Bronchodilation_. Something clicked at the back of her mind, and the transformation was complete. Everything slow, sad, frustrated, inhibited, was stripped away and for the moment the only thing remaining was pure, unadulterated _Root_ , primed and ready for action. "Here we go."

She turned, reversed course and practically clothes-lined Roger, who ran considerably slower, and was several steps behind her when she reached the door.

"Ow! What the shit." She spun him around in place so he was facing back the direction he came.

"You don't need to see that," Root told him firmly, shucking her sweater. "Get a nurse. A _real_ nurse, not a tech. _Now_. And don't let Lauren and Tina down here either. It's… messy." She shoved the sweater into his hands and gave him a push in the direction of the nurses station, before turning back to the kitchen.

Root ignored her prohibition from entering the room, considering the circumstances, and stepped deftly around the glass littering the floor. The coffee maker, warmer plate still on, and the filter pitcher and plastic carafe spout on the ground told the story clearly. Cindy had been trying to make coffee. She took a hot carafe off the warmer and poured the refrigerated water from the pitcher into it, shattering the otherwise remarkably durable pot and spilling the water. That was the first sound they'd heard. The scream, by the small gash on her cheek, had been Cindy's reaction to the realization that she'd been cut by flying glass.

****************************** TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF SELF HARM *******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

What wasn't clear was what had possessed her to subsequently seize one of the larger shards of glass and set about furiously slashing the skin of her left forearm, a grizzly act Root was certain would terrify Tina with it's violence, upset Lauren with the sheer magnitude of mess and disorder, and quite possibly trigger Roger's similar behaviors. She remembered that both of Cindy's arms had been swathed in bandages when she'd first observed her in the hallway. This wasn't the first time she'd done something like this.

"Cindy," she began, voice calm, steady, firm. "You need to stop now. It's okay. You're okay." Root reached a hand out tentatively, advancing in a slight crouch. She was trying not to frighten the younger woman, but she was also primed to spring into action if the glass became an offensive weapon. "Why don't you give me that glass Cindy."

" _It's too_ ** _hard_** _! It's too hard and no one_ ** _believes_** _me!_ " Cindy sobbed back, stopping her actions as she did. She dropped her arms to her sides, blood streaming down her left all the way to her fingertips, but she still didn't relinquish her grasp on the shard in her right hand, despite the fact that it was clear it was cutting into her hand. " _I keep telling them, but they don't_ ** _listen_** _. Why won't anyone believe that it's_ ** _harder_** _for_ ** _me_** _?!? I can't do it. I_ ** _can't_** _! I_ ** _am_** _trying and I_ ** _still_** _can't! I need more help!_ ** _What do I have to do to get someone to help me?_** "

A small whimper behind her alerted Root to Becca's presence. She was sat at in the back corner of the single four person booth that was provided for them to eat snacks at, a barely touched bottle of ensure before her on the table. She must have been caught purging again. Her feet were pulled up onto the bench and her arms wrapped around her knees, making herself as small and quiet as she could. She didn't need to be seeing this.

"It's okay. _I'll help you_ ," Root said, turning her attention back to Cindy, no hesitation of doubt in her voice. "I just need you to _give me the glass_."

_Code 10. M-Unit. Patient Kitchen. Code 10. M-Unit. Patient Kitchen._

_"_ ** _NO!_** _" Cindy_ shook her head fervently, as if spurred on by the imminent arrival of staff now that the code had gone out, and lifted up her bloody arm parallel to the floor, drawing back her right arm, winding up for another slash.

"Whup!" Root sprang forward at that moment, emitting an utterance not dissimilar to that one might make when catching a toddler from knocking their head on the coffee table, and in one fluid motion she caught Cindy's right wrist in her left hand, and pivoted around Cindy's left side, forcing the armed hand to a stationary position at her hip. What was considerably less elegant was her fumbling around for several seconds trying to catch hold of Cindy's left wrist, her arm slick with blood, while shuffling counterclockwise around the sobbing and screaming woman to circumvent her attempts to get her right arm free.

" _Let go! Let goooo! I_ **_have_ ** _to make them_ **_see_** _!!!_ "

"Sorry… I can't… let you… do that." Root grunted out as Cindy struggled. There was considerable blood transfer from Cindy's left arm to her right and her shirt as well as to Root's arms and shirt as they tangled, due to the profuse bleeding. Once Root had hold of both wrists however, the situation ground to a stand off, Cindy's arms crossed in front of her each being pulled out by Root's opposite hand.

" ** _Let go!!!_ ** " It felt as if Cindy might be tearing Root's triceps tendon, as she twisted hard to one side and then the other in an attempt to break free. Root kept her feet beneath her, but relinquished any attempt to control Cindy's movements around the room. It wasn't important to keep her in place, it was important to keep her hands where she couldn't hurt herself. Jerked around, disoriented, Root held fast, baring and gritting her teeth in effort, focus narrowing to the grapple and nothing more.

"Nonononono," Root murmured, calm comforting tone in pretty stark contrast to how she felt, which was like she was on the back of a bucking bronco. "It's okay, you're okay. Shhhhhh… You're okay. I got you. Drop the glass Cindy. Drop it. Drop the knife." She mused not for the first time that the repetition and gentle firmness in these sorts of commands often made it sound as if she was speaking to a dog. "Drop. The. Glass."

************************************* GRAPHIC SCENE END **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

" _Fuck_ ** _off_** _Robin! You're_ ** _not_** _helping!!!_ " Cindy protested.

"Oh sweet lord!" Gloria stopped short a few steps into the kitchen, a few feet of glass shards separating her from Root and Cindy as Lawrence, Francis, Lewis and Oliver piled in directly behind her. They weren't sure what they were expecting when they entered the kitchen, but they certainly hadn't expected to find Cindy _restrained_ by Robin apparently from cutting her arm with a shard of broken coffee pot.

"It's okay. You're okay," Root continued to murmur, without slacking her grip. "You're okay Cindy. Drop it. Okay? Drop it."

"Robin, what the fuck?!?" Lewis barked. "Let go! _Now!"_

"Shhhhs… it's oka- yeah no," Root interrupted herself from trying to calm Cindy. "Not while she's still armed." Her vocal register jumped up on the last word as Cindy jerked her to the side.

" _You've ruined it! You ruin everything!_ " Cindy cried.

"Oh Robin, it's not your job to handle these kinds of problems," Gloria said, without any anger in her voice, it almost sounded like pity, but it couldn't be, not in this context. It was a bad situation, and they'd have to talk to 'Robin' about this kind of thing later but-

"Well then feel free to _step in any time now_ ," Root sniped exasperatedly thru gritted teeth as Cindy yanked particularly hard.  It was clear from her tone, and the 'are you stupid?' expression in her wide open eyes that she didn't think while she was still holding a struggling Cindy was the time for this conversation _either_.

"Okay, okay," Gloria sighed. "Lewis will you get the glass from Cindy so it's safe for Robin to let go? You _are_ going to let go when we have the glass, right Robin?"

"Yeah. Becca," Root gritted out, nodding toward the corner, as Lewis grabbed a potholder to avoid getting his hand cut and came in close to try and take the glass from Cindy's hand. "Shhhh… Shhhh Cindy. Seriously, you're going to be fine."

" _Bite me!_ "

"Oh sweetie," Gloria exclaimed seeing her there. "Lawrence take Becca and send Danny in here in your place please." With a nod, he took Becca's hand and helped her up out of the booth and lead her out into the hall past where Roger, Lauren and Tina were clustered in concern. "There's no show here," He said. "Move on."

"But Robin's still in there," Lauren protested.

"Look, they're going to be taking Cindy thru here shortly and we need the hall clear. I have to send Danny to fetch Robin and I'll make sure he brings her back to where we are, okay?"

"Were you in the kitchen?" Roger asked Becca, as the three fell in step.

"She wouldn't stop cutting herself," Becca murmured. "So much blood…"

"Robin?!"

"Cindy."

Back in the kitchen, once the glass was out of her hand and Cindy was far more compliant, having been robbed of her implement of self destruction, and apparently far more receptive to Gloria's verbal comfort than Root's, standing dejectedly still in the middle of the kitchen after Root relinquished her grasp.

"We're going to get you over to Rhetta now, right away dearie. You need some patching up for your trip. You're gonna go see the big hospital again now, okay? You like it there, right?"

She gestured to Francis and Oliver, who, in light of Cindy's injuries, opted to gently guide Cindy by her shoulders while she walked with her left arm cradled in front of her by her right. Root, relieved of her burden, suddenly felt physically quite light, like the floaty feeling one gets in their limbs after they finally leave their baggage in the hotel room and take their first few unburdened steps. It was a good thing Lawrence had cleared the trio from the hallway, as the sight of what she'd done to herself was nothing they needed to see.

"I need to go with Cindy," Gloria to Danny as he arrived. "Can you handle Robin?"

"I don't need handling," Root giggled, knitting her brow, with an incredulous tone and a disbelieving smile, but Gloria was already gone.  

"What happened?" Danny asked, taking a cautious defensive position. He hadn't exactly been fully filled in, and wasn't sure if 'Robin; was a threat or not.

"I'm not going to hurt you Danny. I didn't do… that," Root gestured vaguely at the door Cindy had been taken out of. "She did that herself. I _stopped_ her."

"Okay so… Cindy was harming herself and you, what? _Grabbed_ her?"

"I asked her to put down the glass. She didn't. So I held her arms so she couldn't hurt herself anymore until the code team came. That's all there is to it. I'm fine. Cindy's the one who's messed up. I don't need… whatever you're here to do. I just need a shower and clean clothes."

"Are you sure you're alright?" Danny squinted his eyes slightly, as if he were trying to see thru her, but she was actually quite bright eyed, alert, standing taller than usual, and breathing only slightly more heavily than normal, all in all looking like someone who'd just gotten off a roller coaster. The only thing that could be considered amiss is that 'Robin' actually seemed to be _genuinely_ okay. That in and of itself was suspicious, but he couldn't very well keep her stuck there for being more well than usual.

"Seriously Danny," Root said, reassuringly, "what's going to help me the most right now is getting the blood off. Not a big fan of other people's bodily fluids all over me."

"Fair. More than fair," Danny nodded, relenting. "Just so you know they _will_ be blood testing her, to see if there's anything transmissible we need to worry about you catching. But yeah, you go get cleaned up. Leave your clothes on the floor in the changing area, we need to send them through the bio-contaminated linens, okay?"

Root nodded, and skirted around Danny out of the room.

"But we _do_ need to talk about what just happened Robin," Danny turned to continue addressing her. "I'll be in the day room when you're done, okay? Come find me there."

"Clothes on the floor, meet you in the day room. I got it. I got it."

"Don't blow me off Robin," Danny added. "This is important."

"I won't Danny," Root said, without turning back. "Relax."

Her walk to the shower was… _invigorating_ to say the least. Still high on the adrenaline of the situation and feeling light on her feet, Root took her time meandering to the bathroom, deriving great pleasure in the reactions of others to seeing her bloodied hands and arms accentuating it now and then with a cheshire smile and a predatory gaze. _Now you see_ **_me_** _. Now you see what I am._ While most of the staff had grasped how truly dangerous she was during some of her more dangerous episodes of acting out, to her fellow patients her violent streak was something spoken about but never _seen_. It was less real to them, until now.

Some stared slack jawed, others skittered away into doors almost certainly assuming from the blood on her hands that she'd hurt someone and they might be next. It wasn't true, but that only made it all the more enjoyable since it meant she wouldn't have to handle the consequences of having actually hurt someone. Instead she soaked in their apprehension while she could, certain the staff would have set everyone straight by the time she was clean, but still satisfied that no one would be able to scrub this image from their minds.

Only one of the two showers was occupied when she got there. She wasn't sure if there was an opening in the evening shower schedule, or if she had gotten there before whoever's slot this was, but if she had they could wait. As far as Root knew, she was the only one currently covered in someone else's blood, and that trumped the schedule. She stepped out of her shoes just inside the bathroom, and used her bare toes to open the curtain to the changing area, and then the curtain to the shower, avoiding transferring the blood on her hands and arms to them, before reaching into the shower and turning on the water.

Once divested of the contaminated garments, Root slid into the shower carefully around the only partially open curtain. She thrust her arms and hands into the water in front of her, trying to rinse as much of the blood down her fingertips as possible, rather than having it run down her body. It wasn't as easy as she would have liked. The water pressure was shit and some of the blood it had begun to dry into a crust where it was thin.

"Skree- eee- eee- eee," Root giggled, feeling slightly giddy. Glancing down at the floor of the shower, where the blood spiraled around the drain, she was reminded of the movie Psycho. Something about the combination of white tile, white curtains, white floor and ceiling, fluorescent lighting, and the white noise of running water, made the space feel unreal. It was disorienting, evoking a mild dizziness. Was her blood even red, or did it just look like that because she expected it to like, like what happened to the people watching Psycho? Or was it more like THX 1138? _Yes… much more like that_ , she decided. This whole place was like that, a dystopia where they stuff you full of pills to make you complacent. Stick the defectives in a plain white expanse and shock them until they comply. "Performance perfect is perfect performance," she quipped, quoting the film.

The train of thought was interrupted by a stinging pain in her left arm, drawing her attention for the first time to the incised wound it bore. It wasn't particularly long, but seemed rather deep in the middle. "Huh." Cindy must have gotten her with the glass after all. The water ran pink as it passed over the wound but not red, so it wasn't urgent, right? _Right_ , Root decided. She'd had worse and gone on for longer. The way Tom had reacted to the blood she'd gotten on her sheets weeks ago, she was fairly certain that they'd make entirely too big a deal out of this. _Breath deep. In thru the mouth, out thru the nose._ It was no problem.

When she had gotten most of the blood off her arms Root stepped further into the water, feeling the warmth spread down from the crown of her head as her hair slowly soaked thru. The heat made her drowsy and a little unsteady on her feet but she didn't pay it much mind. She never did get that cup off coffee she'd been after, so there was nothing to work against the mind numbing side effects of the risperidone. With the majority of the blood gone, it was becoming somewhat of an ordinary shower, complete with ordinary shower retrospection. Many a missed opportunity for a snappy comeback were recognized in the shower… and many a solution for ongoing problems.

 _She didn't drop the glass. - Wait, what? - She didn't drop the glass. - Lewis got it from her. - Right, but_ **_you_ ** _couldn't make her drop the glass. - So what? - You're losing your touch. You didn't do it right. You could have done better. Complacent. Rusty. Ineffective. Impotent. - Oh fuck you._

Like Gloria said, Root reminded herself, it wasn't even her job to handle that kind of thing. She would have been well within her bounds to just fuck off to her room after she'd told Roger to get a nurse. There was nothing more that she was obligated to do. She had gone _above and beyond_ not only in sheer capability, after all, not just anyone could have held Cindy like that, but she had also gone beyond what could be reasonably asked of her. What did it matter if Cindy dropped the glass or not?

 _Get cleaner faster_. She thought, and that thought she didn't fight as she began to take a chill. The water heater, for safety reasons, was turned to a temperature where even the hottest setting couldn't scald, which kept showers short as the hot water ran out quickly. Shivering. She was even shivering now. The water was far too cold.

It was about this point that Root realized she hadn't brought any soap with her or shampoo, but she hadn't gotten any blood in her hair she didn't think, so she twisted her body and reached up with her left hand to the soap dispenser on the wall with the cheap horrible smelling hospital soap, ignoring the pain that shot thru her arm as she did and-

 

* * *

 

"Robin? Can you hear me sweetheart?"

"Hello gorgeous," Root smiled lecherously at the pretty face hovering over her.

"That's something at least," another voice said. "But she's clearly not all there right now."

"Owwwww!" Root whined at the sharp pain in her arm that dragged her back to reality. She was laying naked on the floor in the changing area of the shower. Someone had thrown a towel over top of her torso to give her some semblance of cover but it didn't protect against the chill of the cold tile floor, and someone was pressing hard on the wound she'd gotten from Cindy.

"Mary?" she blinked at the figure on her right, as cognition returned. She glanced to the left as things came into sharper resolution. "Rhetta? Did I slip on something?"

"I think you passed out," the nurse replied, still keeping pressure on her wound. "Why didn't you come to me right when you got cut?"

"I didn't notice until I was in the shower…" Root replied, groggily. "I was _going_ to come see you when I was done. It didn't seem that bad. I've had worse."

"You didn't feel faint?"

"I've been feeling faint _all day_ since Dr. Leipman started me on the Risperidone," Root said, defensively. Mary and Rhetta exchanged exasperated glances, not so much over the content of what Root was saying, but over the fact that someone who had just barely regained consciousness was already trying to argue with them. "There's _no_ way I lost enough blood to pass out from it. I wasn't in there long enough. I've lasted longer than this with an untended _gunshot wound_. This is a nick by comparison."

"Well firstly, blood doesn't clot under running water, so assuming you weren't swimming your untended bullet wound at least had the benefit of clotting, and I'll guess torn clothing stuck to the wound as well. But beyond that heat drops your blood pressure, and you had the water on pretty hot. Staying in the shower was the _worst_ possible thing you could have done for this." Rhetta released Root's arm dropping a bloodied ball of gauze on the floor next to her, and began pulling something from her apron.

"The water was getting _cold_ before this happened. I was shivering."

"It was still running hot when we came in. It just _felt_ cold because you were going into hypovolemic shock."

"Fun."

"This is serious," Mary said. "What would you have done if Lilly hadn't heard you fall from the other stall?"

"Probably woke up when the water ran cold," Root ventured, sliding her arms back slightly and trying to prop herself up. Mary shook her head and disappeared out the curtain. "Since _apparently_ it hadn't yet."

"Stay down," Rhetta commanded. "I'm not done." She blotted at the wound with the gauze and pinched at the skin of Root's arm, checking to see if the edges of the wound lined up. "You genuinely didn't notice this until you were in the shower?"

"Why would I lie about something like _that?"_ Root tilted her head.

"If you felt it before and tried to hide it from us then pretending not to have noticed until later would cover one lie with another but if you really didn't feel this…"  

"It's not nerve damage from the gunshot if that's what you're thinking," Root preempted her. "It's just that thing where in the heat of the moment you don't always feel an injury. It's not an uncommon phenomenon. Happens to me all the time."

"Over the total population, no it's not uncommon, but it _is_ remarkable," Rhetta pulled out an iodine wipe and opened the package, starting to clean the skin around the wound. "The kind of thing that people tell stories about that _one_ time that this happened to them. When you say it happens to you _all the time?_ That's concerning."

"Concerning? No. Catastrophe is where I _live._ When the shit hits the fan, that's when I'm my best. I'm stronger, faster, more accurate. I have no fear, no pain. There's nothing I can't handle." Root smiled. "In an emergency situation you _want_ people like me around… it's just that I don't do very well when there aren't any crisis to solve."

"It's concerning in that it's landed you on your ass in the shower," Rhetta sighed. She pulled out a package of steri strips, and set to closing Root's wound with them.

"Hey," Root was defensive. "I didn't pass out or whatever until _after_ it was all done. I mean it's fair to say maybe I should check myself over a little better after the dust settles… I might have noticed this sooner, but that doesn't negate the benefit in the moment."

"Drink this," Mary rematerialized with a carton of orange juice.  Rhetta began rummaging around in her apron again.

"I prefer apple," Root scrunched up her face.

"Well orange is what's going to help you right now, so deal with it," Mary replied. Root pulled a face which suggested orange juice was disgusting (which it wasn't, she just didn't want it) but took it anyway. She tried to sit up again, but Rhetta put her hand on her sternum to stop her.

"You can sit up when you've _finished_ the juice," Rhetta said, before taking her hand back to lay a gauze pad over the injury and begin to wrap Root's upper arm in spooled gauze to hold it in place.

"Hmmm," Root murmured around the straw, it was both an answer of understanding, and an appreciative utterance at her present state of physical comfort. Despite the cold at her back, and the pain of her injury, she was somewhat contented with Rhetta's deft hands wrapping her arm, the surprisingly pleasant sensation of drinking (she really must have lost a lot of fluid for it to be this gratifying) and the fuzzy, heavy, almost sleepy-drunk feeling she was sure was caused by the same source that caused her to collapse, though she wasn't entirely convinced yet that it was all from blood loss.

"Can you wiggle your fingers?" Rhetta asked, finishing her work.  Root did more than just that, lifting her arm to flourish her hand up at Rhetta's eye level, simultaneously missing the touch of the nurse's hands and relieved that it had stopped and she could get her head about her enough to suppress that latent desire for human contact and fend off any more. "Don't overdo it."

"Oh but that's what I'm good at," Root smiled. "Overdoing it." She sucked hard on the straw, finishing the second half of the carton in only a few gulps, and on the sounding of the straw sucking at air, immediately tried to sit up again. Rhetta sighed and didn't stop her this time. Mary rolled her eyes.

"Do you have any sense of self preservation?" Mary lamented.

"Of course," Root replied. "I also know this _isn't_ going to kill me."

"No standing yet," Mary warned, as Root looked like she was about to try. "Sit for a bit."

"Floor's reeeeeally cold," Root complained, but that only prompted Mary to grab another towel off the cart, and place it, folded, next to Root. She shifted over to sit on it, holding her modesty  towel up with her wounded arm, scowling. "I guess this will do."

"Stay still a moment," Rhetta pulled a blood pressure cuff out of Root knew not where, and wrapped it around her good arm, pumping it up and taking her wrist. "I need to get an idea of how much blood you lost. Hopefully we won't have to send you out for blood transfusion… It would be fairly uncomfortable given you only travel in full restraint."

"I don't need a transfusion," Root scoffed. "I'm awake and talking to you."

"You lost a lot of fluids," Rhetta replied. Unlike Dory she was able to hold a conversation and take a blood pressure at the same time. "But you're right," she nodded at her own calculation. "Your blood pressure is low, but not so low that we can't handle it here. We'll just run some regular fluids into you to get your blood pressure back up, and you'll be fine."

"Sure, but no more orange juice," Root replied. "I want apple."

"That's not what I meant," Rhetta sighed, "I meant a liter or two of IV fluid."

"Ohhh no." Root shook her head. "I already told you I don't need a transfusion."

"It's not a transfusion."

"Whatever you want to call it, I'm not that injured. I'm fine," Root started to stand up, and when Mary tried to stop her, she shoved her off. She'd tolerated enough doting for today. "See. I'm up. I'm okay. No IV needed."

"Robin, please."

"No. I do not consent to any kind of IV. It's not happening. I don't need you lot hovering over me like a bunch of mother hens. I'm fine." She adjusted her towel so it wrapped fully around her, clasping both ends in her left hand and using her right to steady herself on the wall. "I'm done here. Thank you for the dressing. That's all I need. I have to go get dressed now. Danny is waiting."

"Danny will understand."

"There's nothing _to_ understand. I'm fine," Root reiterated, making her way out of the bathroom. "There is absolutely no reason that I can't go get dressed now and go to the dayroom. No reason."

 

* * *

 

"Hey Robin," Danny was stood in the doorway of her room.

"Come to rag on me for not showing up in the dayroom yet?" Root was dressed in a fresh t-shirt, her sweater, and her pajama bottoms, seeing no point in putting on another set of day pants after dinner.

"Nah, I heard what happened, and that you blew off Rhetta to come back here and get dressed so you could come meet me. I can wait. You should let Rhetta finish with you."

"I'm good," Root replied, walking as if she intended to go past him… but Danny didn't move out of the doorway. "Seriously Danny?"

"This isn't a behavior I can just ignore Robin."

"Behavior? Like a symptom? It's not a symptom Danny. It's exercising my right to decline unnecessary medical treatment."

"It's a reckless disregard for your own safety… the second instance today."

"Second? Are you seriously calling it a _symptom_ that I stepped up to save Cindy?"

"I'm saying you _didn't_ 'save' her. You might have mitigated the damage some, _might_ , but you got hurt in the process, and you laid hands on another patient in an unacceptable way. You're not in any _trouble_ for that because we understand _why_ you did it, and there was no harm done, except to you, but you need to understand that you _can't_ do that kind of thing again. That's what I needed to talk to you about."

"Unbelievable," she rolled her eyes and her body followed, turning her back on Danny and heading to her chair.

"It was reckless. You're not staff Robin. You're a patient. You could have made things worse for Cindy, or _you_ could have been _hurt_ worse than you were."

_She didn't drop the glass._

"That hardly matters," Root retorted, both to Danny and the nagging voice in the back of her mind.

"It does Robin. You matter."

"I _know_ **_I_ ** matter. I also know I how much **_I_ ** can handle. It's not a big deal."

"It _is_ a big deal Robin. It's a big deal when someone gets hurt here. We take that sort of thing very very seriously."

"Oh really? Then where in the hell were you when Cindy got a hold of that glass? I'll tell you. You were all sitting on your thumbs while I did _your_ job _faster_ and _better_ than you do. _She could have_ **_died_ ** _Danny."_ Root stood abruptly. "You want me to keep out of it, then next time, pay attention and _do your damn job!_ Now **_get out of my room_**." She advanced menacingly toward him.

He sighed and stepped away, not willing to resort to manual restraint just yet. There had to be a better way to talk her into taking the fluids.

"She's not listening," Danny briefed Gloria as he got to the nurses station. "She won't take the drip, she doesn't understand why we aren't grateful for what she did, and she's storming around cranky using up energy she doesn't have. The way _she_ sees it we left her holding the bag and Cindy could be dead now if not for her. What I _can't_ tell is if she's wound up because the whole thing _got_ to her on some level and she's acting out with aggression or if, as she _claims,_ she's just offended because the fact that it happened at all indicates we don't actually care about patients."

"I can't even blame her for that," Gloria replied. "I know there's probably no way we could have seen this coming, but I still feel like maybe we should have had a closer eye on Cindy after what happened in Trauma group."

"Hindsight is 20-20. She was calmed down. I don't think she would have done it at all if the coffee pot hadn't shattered like that. It wasn't planned. It was impulse."

"I know… I know. Things like this just make you question everything. What could I have done to prevent this? You know?"

"Anyway… maybe Alex or Dana might get further than we did. They're not a part of the unit… so they might be exempt from the anger… I hope… and they sure have more training than I do. Any idea if they're still here?"

"Try Alex first, it started in Dana's group," Gloria pointed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffs Notes/Trigger Info:
> 
> After dinner, Cindy escalates her cry for help further by harming herself with a piece of glass. Root sends Roger for help and intervenes until they get there, restraining Cindy and sustaining an accidental injury to her arm in the process. Cindy is sent out of Ridgestone for medical care, and Root passes out in the shower from low blood pressure, having underestimated the severity of her wound while high on the excitement of the situation.


	39. Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings suck...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been heavily edited since it's original version. The first go round was way too... open... on Root's part.

"Robin?" Alex peeked in her door and glanced around. No 'Robin.' The poor purple panther was discarded on the floor a few feet from the door, with at least two dusty footprints on his face. He returned to the hall, and made his way back towards the nurses station as the dormitory hall dead ended in a small sitting area with two chairs and a plant. It was a common spot for people to meet with their visitors, who were not allowed in their rooms, but it was already clear she wasn't there. She wasn't in the day room or the dining room either, but he followed that hall to its end, knowing it would end in a T intersection leading to the kitchen and beyond that another dead end sitting area, and the other turning again after passing the back stairwell and becoming the activities hall.

Strictly speaking the patients weren't allowed down the stairs unless they were headed to a session with their primary psychiatrist, but the way the facility was laid out, and the way the stairs were constructed, nothing actually kept them from going down there except 15 minute checks. There was nothing down there they could get into trouble with. The psychiatrist's offices were all quite firmly locked as was the seldom used nurses station which was only used on the days where the electroconvulsive therapist came in from the city to treat the few patients (across the whole facility) who had elected to receive it. It was still a strange architectural choice, but Alex supposed it was less staff intensive than having a checkpoint between the patients and their primaries.

It was also the most likely place to find a patient who was feeling the need to flee, hide, or just be _alone_ , so he took the stairs betting on finding Robin down there. As he reached a point halfway down the stairs, his suspicions were confirmed.

"Just make it STOP!" he suddenly heard a dull thudding sound toward the furthest accessible parts of the hall. One, two, three… and after a pause, a fourth. Then nothing. Sure enough at the back end of the hall, just next to the locked doors that lead to the facilities corridor, there sat 'Robin' eyes screwed shut, facing up toward the ceiling, one knee up and the other leg out, against the wall, hands palm down on the floor by her side, the right one covering the face down phone and the left with fingers arched and trembling. "They didn't need to call you," she said, somehow aware it was Alex without opening her eyes.

"They kinda did," Alex replied. He'd been catching up on paperwork when Danny came down to him, and while it was a pain to keep getting called up here off schedule, he knew what he signed up for when he let Robin start developing a more one-on-one therapeutic relationship with him, and even if he hadn't, this situation _was_ a big deal after all- "blood was drawn."

"Not much," Root shrugged opening her eyes, and turning her head to look at him. She had either been crying or come very close, by the amount of redness there, but he didn't see any tears. "I'm fine, really. They're making mountains out of molehills."

"Is that why you're down here banging your head on the walls again?"

"I'm not," she lied, convincingly. He'd believe her if he hadn't heard it himself while he was coming down the stairs.

"I found you by the sound," he replied, sitting down cross legged on the floor. She was in a camera blind spot, but he made sure _he_ wasn't. She scoffed but didn't answer. "What's going on Robin? What are you doing down here?"

"I wanted to be alone, _clearly_." She rubbed her left hand up her neck on the side opposite Alex, taking a fistful of her hair at the base of her skull and surreptitiously pulling on it, at the same time holding up the phone with her right hand as she spoke of The Machine. "They kept interrupting us in my room. You know she won't talk when there's anyone near enough to overhear."

"They keep interrupting because they're _worried_ about you Robin. You're really upset right now, and it's impacting your judgement."

"Oh really?"

"You need fluids."

"Oh, don't you start too," Root lamented. "The only thing that's making me _upset_ right now is the way you people are all carrying on about this whole thing. Everyone's treating me like I've been stabbed in the _gut_ and not the arm. They're twisting _everything_. I wasn't expecting a ticker-tape parade Alex, I don't need that kind of recognition, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting everyone to start acting like I'd done something _wrong."_

"Mmm… so what you're saying is that it's the _staff_ that's winding you up, not... _what happened in the kitchen_."

"I was _fine_ until Danny started in on me," she replied, lying to herself as much as Alex. In point of fact there was one thing about that situation that was still nagging at her: _Cindy never dropped the glass_. Root tightened the fist in her hair at the thought, sending sparks thru her scalp. "They're calling it a 'behavior' Alex, as in a symptom. On what kind of backwards planet is trying to _stop_ someone from hurting themselves pathological? I mean… I did the _right_ thing Alex, and they're using it _against_ me."

"That doesn't sound fair," Alex replied, beginning to understand at least the surface issue. It was incredibly unlikely that she hadn't been affected in _some_ way by her encounter with Cindy, but whether it was displacement or simply something more immediately pressing, 'Robin's main source of agitation at this time was the sense she was being wrongly maligned by the floor staff.

"It isn't!" She released her fistful of hair to gesture emphatically. "If this is what I get for trying to do something _good_ , then I may as well just _not_."

"What does she have to say about all this?" he asked, gesturing at the phone.

"Well _She_ thinks I did the right thing," Root replied, "but she's being a butt about the whole fluids thing. She doesn't think I _need_ them either, mind you, but she keeps pointing out that it would speed recovery, and that's reason enough to let them do it."

"So… why don't you?"

"Because I'm not going to _reward_ them for bad behavior."

"Bad behavior?"

"I told you, they're treating this whole thing like I had some kind of crazy person episode and just got _lucky_ stopping her. I knew what I was doing Alex. It wasn't luck. It was _skill_. It was _perfectly_ executed. Quick. Precise. I had her held tight in _seconds_ , no getting loose. It was like a choreographed dance. I'm _good_ at that kind of thing."

He didn't fail to note the differences between her perception and what actually transpired. In point of fact on the video there had been a great deal of fumbling after Cindy's second hand, and 'Robin' had been jerked around like a fly fishing lure trying to keep her grip on the other woman. It was no worse than anyone else could have done, but it was hardly the picture of grace she seemed to remember it as. Also her account of the tale completely glossed over both her attempts to talk Cindy down before restraining her, and the fact that she'd spent the majority of the time she was holding on to her shushing her like a crying baby, both clear attempts to handle the other woman's emotional state, focusing only on her ability to overpower Cindy physically.

"I saw the tape." Alex nodded, giving no judgment on if it had been the right thing to do or not.

"I'm like that in a fight too. It's like ballet, but not."

"It was very skillful," Alex offered leaving the ballet metaphor deliberately unaddressed, but filing it away for later. It was the second mention of dance in quick succession. He remembered from Dr. Carmichael's intervention that she had done ballet as a youngster, and wondered if any part of her stubborn endurance was inspired by the 'work thru the pain' attitude of the dance culture.

"We still don't want you doing it though."

"That's a waste of resources," Root chided.

"You're not a resource, you're a patient," Alex replied.

"Well that's a horrible thing to say to anyone," Root scowled. Alex couldn't tell if she was actually offended, or mock offended.

"That you're a patient?"

"That I'm _not_ a resource. Useless." He hadn't said the last but that she had read it that way gave Alex some insight into the current predicament. Although not a one of them would admit it, counterdependants like Robin derived their entire sense of self worth from their successes, and the commensurate rewards and recognition. The only judgement of others that mattered was that they know she was smarter, faster, and more competent than anyone else, and right _now_ the staff was determined to impress upon her that she was _not_ the most competent person to handle situations like Cindy's. Combine that with black and white thinking and all 'Robin' was hearing right now was that they thought she was useless, ineffectual, incompetent. No wonder she was being difficult.

"I'm not saying you're useless Robin, you're anything but," Alex explained. "But you're not a resource we're meant to be using. We're not paying you. You're paying us. It would be improper for us to have you doing our job."

"It _was_ improper. They _didn't_ do their job. _Someone_ had to do it."

Alex didn't have a good answer for that. If any random person in the outside world had come upon the same thing in their office kitchenette, stepping in in the manner that 'Robin' had would be seen as a laudable action. But they were in a hospital, and she wasn't a professional and she wasn't close enough to Cindy personally to know the ins and outs of her meltdowns. It so happened that in this case, she managed to get a hold on Cindy and keep her from doing more damage to herself before help arrived, but there was a reason she hadn't been able to calm the other woman or get her to drop the glass. Cindy wasn't going to accept soothing from anyone who already had her in a grapple. That wasn't how she worked.

"That's uncharacteristically altruistic of you," Alex observed. "Regardless of the rest, I'm actually really proud of you for that: for trying to _help_ someone."

Root smiled just a little at that, glancing down and to the side almost as if embarrassed. Normally, he realized, she would have admonished him for that kind of praise. 'Robin' was uncharacteristically receptive to praise, she'd had had at least one violent outburst (stomping in her cat's face) and this all started with a demonstration of selflessness that no one would have expected from her.  Though the mechanism was not yet apparent, it was apparent to Alex that exposure to Cindy's meltdown had triggered the emergence of the disavowed side of the split, the 'Robbie' side, to handle it. She was trying to hide that fact, to reassert her preferred self image, but she didn't have it completely under control yet.

"Why do you think you did it?" Alex asked, wondering if she had sufficient insight to realize what was happening.

"She was _cutting herself_ ," Root replied, as if the question was stupid. "She was slicing into her own flesh, for no constructive purpose. Destroying her _own_ body. In what world does that _not_ constitute a problem?"

"I didn't say there was no problem. I asked why _you_ intervened."

"She was being _stupid._ There was no purpose, no planning, no ultimatum. She didn't stand to gain _anything_ . She could have hit her brachial artery. She could have _died_ . Who _does_ that kind of thing?"

"So… you were _concerned_ about her then," Alex pointed out.

"I'm _slipping_ ," Root said, dejectedly, as she slumped against the wall.

"Slipping," he turned the word over in his mouth. So she _did_ have some awareness that she was acting from the 'unacceptable' side of the split… and she wasn't happy about it, at all.

"I'm not a _sociopath_ Alex," she explained. "It does take some degree of mental discipline not to let empathy override intellect. There's no good _reason_ to care what happens to Cindy, but I let it happen anyway. I gotta pull my shit together." She almost knocked her head against the wall again, but stopped herself. Alex saw, but he didn't mention it, since she'd refrained.

"Now c'mon," Alex interrupted. "Like you said, you did the _right_ thing."

"I know but… that's not me Alex. Since when am I the person who's trying to do the right thing? I'm… reverting. I'm turning into a _child_ . I mean I froze up in the hall, I had a panic attack coming off the Ativan, I _cried_ at the courthouse… now I'm _caring_ about people like Cindy." She pressed into her temples with her thumbs. "It's… It's… it's…I don't know. This isn't me. This isn't who I am. I hate it here. I literally and completely despise this. And the worst part of it… you know the worst part?"

Alex shook his head.

"If I was like I was… If I hadn't let myself get all _sentimental_ about you people. I could walk out of here. I could have already _been_ out of here. If I hadn't felt something _bad_ about hitting Jerry, I'd have made the stairs. If I was willing to hurt you, _really_ hurt you we'd be walking right out that door," she gestured to the facilities corridor. "But now I _know_ you people. I even _like_ some of you. Isn't that pathetic?"

"Seriously?" Alex scoffed. "You don't actually expect me to agree with that, do you?"

Root just narrowed her eyes at him, suspiciously.

"Why would I think it was pathetic that you care about some people. I mean… that's kind of my vocation. I care about people for a living. From where I'm sitting what you're describing is progress."

"It doesn't feel like progress. It feels like going _backwards_ ," she said, gazing at the intersection of four tiles.

"Sometimes… things can _feel_ like they're going backwards because when you stop using bad workarounds and the permanent fixes aren't quite ready yet, things get a bit dodgy. I guess… it's like the free-fall before you deploy the chute?"

"Trust falls," Root murmured under her breath.

"Yeah… and we're here to catch you. We _will_ catch you."

"I'm… I'm not okay with this," Root replied, reluctantly. It wasn't a statement of refusal, but an admission of disquiet, of what was bothering her so deeply right now. It was becoming more apparent as time went on that replacing of _all_ her crappy workarounds inevitably meant leaving some parts of stupid, awful Samantha Groves to slip out now and then. It would be quite impossible for her to be _okay_ with that. Sam was irrational, always wanting things she couldn't have. Sam was weak, she cried in closets when no one was looking. Sam was always one step behind, she fell short over and over and over again. Worst of all, Sam desperately longed for _help_ , for someone to pick up a part of her burden and make it more bearable. Sure Sam was 'such a trooper' on the surface, strong, responsible, mature, but that was all pretense. Underneath she was fragile, helpless, and infantile. Pathetic. Root was _better_ than all that. Maybe a little less than responsible, but mature, strong, capable, confident, _all_ the way through… _except she didn't drop the glass._

"Not okay how? Not okay angry? Not okay scared? Not okay sad?"

"Not acceptable. I can't _let_ myself slip like that. I've already slipped too far."

"Is it because you don't trust that we _will_ catch you?"

"Maybe? But even if you did… I'm not… I'm not that kind of faller. I _can't_ … if you asked me to actually fall off a table and trust you to literally catch me of course that would be hard but I could _do_ that. It's just a matter of gravity. What you're asking me to do… to be okay with… I mean that's like pissing yourself on purpose. It's _humiliating_ and contrary to every bodily instinct."

"Being real is like peeing your pants?" Alex stifled his amusement at the metaphor.

"It's not _'being real.'_ It's being willfully infantile."

"Ah," Alex nodded. Of course. Being real would mean revealing parts of herself which were entirely ego-dystonic, things she was by virtue of her split, entirely unable to accept as a true part of herself.

"I lied," she admitted after a protracted pause, gazing off into the middle distance. "I _was…_ y'know," she jerked her head a little, miming knocking it on the wall without making a connection. "I wasn't trying to hurt myself… I know you think that's what it is, but it's _not._ I just… I was trying to _get a grip_."

"Okay," Alex nodded. She wouldn't be the first person with an emotional regulation issue who tried to _literally_ knock unwanted thoughts or feelings out of their head, and it wasn't going to do him any good at this juncture to point out that a motive of self regulation didn't actually preclude self harm. "How can we help you to… to get a grip… without having to resort to that?"

"You don't see me doing it right now, do you?"

"Fair," Alex conceded. "Okay… how can we h- what would it take to get you back upstairs and on the drip?"

"I don't need the drip. I'm **_fine_**." She'd already submitted to enough assistance letting Rhetta clean and dress the wound. She could have done that herself if they would let her… and they might have if she'd made it to the medical office before passing out like that. The last thing she needed was to be tethered to an IV bag with everyone treating her like she was made of glass.

"Putting that to the side for a minute here… what's your price Robin? I mean we both know it's not going to hurt you even if you don't need it… and even your god says it would help make recovery faster, so what's going to have to happen to get you to cooperate? What do you n- What do you _want_ from us?" Need was a nasty word to Robin.

"I don't know. I don't… stuck here…"

"If you weren't stuck here, what would you be doing about this, right now?"

"Running… literally. Running helps a lot. Or going for a ride... _fast_. Maybe visit the shooting range. Did you firing a gun releases endorphins and Oxytocin? Hop online and waste some n00bs at whatever's the FPS dejure of the moment. Fast paced puzzle games. Go to a club and get lost in the lights and the music. I don't even like to dance that much, but just… the sensory overload, you know? Get a private show on Chaturbate. Crash some corporate shindig I'm not supposed to be at and see how much caviar I can eat before someone-"

"Wait go back one."

"Excuse me?" she looked up.

"What is that. I don't know what that is."

"Live internet porn," Root rolled her eyes. "Come to the 21st century, or are you still slapping the monkey to 45 second RealPlayer files?"

"I… I should have known that was a thing," Alex replied shaking his head. "Okay the pattern I'm seeing here though is that when you're feeling… _like this_... your usual solution would be to go chasing an adrenaline or endorphin high via risky behavior." Or by cracking her head against the wall until the same mechanism kicked in which meant, in essence if not in fact, she was justified in asserting that it was not self harm. It was simply one of the few avenues of sensation seeking available to her while on a locked ward. It was more akin to the headbanging performed by toddlers and people with developmental disorders, meant to fulfill a need for stimulation with little to no actual experience of the pain it should be causing. It also meant she was likely motivated to intervene with Cindy at least partially for the thrill of the physical altercation.

"And no one is going to let me do anything exciting or risky around here."

"Well we are fairly risk averse," Alex agreed. "But that's not the only reason we wouldn't want you doing that kind of thing. What you're describing is _avoidance_ , and if you're avoiding things then you're not dealing with them… which is what you're here to do."

"I'm not avoiding anything," Root replied. "There's nothing to avoid. I just feel…" she didn't know what word to use, so the sentence trailed off.

"Yeah. You _feel_. You're avoiding _feeling_. You said before that you're not a sociopath, that it takes discipline to ignore your feelings… but you're not _meant_ to be ignoring them Robin."

"Really because last I checked an inability to do so was classified as a mood disorder."

Alex sighed, not having a snappy comeback ready for that. Mental hospitals weren't always conducive environments to the idea that it's alright to have negative feelings. In fact there was an annoying tendency on the wards to turn every expressed emotion into a symptom, as if by having a mental illness in the first place, the residents had forfeit their rights to be happy or sad or disappointed like any other human being. And given 'Robin's history it was entirely likely that she'd internalized that attitude long before arriving at Ridge Stone, knowing that emotional displays in public were one of the things that classified her mother as 'crazy' and seeking to avoid the label herself.

"Look… even if we were to let you… to try and help even, no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be able to turn yourself into a Sociopath. The ship has sailed on that. You're an adult. Sociopaths are made in childhood."

"Yeah well I'm _not_ going back up there while I still feel… like this," she still didn't have a word for it. "I can't be around people like this, and I certainly can't have a nurse mother henning over an IV drip while I'm like this. It's not going to happen. So unless you have a way to make it stop, this is where I stay, and I'd prefer to do it _alone_."

"Alright, get up," Alex announced, standing.

"What?"

"Get up, you're doing jumping jacks," he extended his good hand to help her up.

"What?"

"You don't have to use your left arm."

"But why?"

"Runner's high makes it stop, right? So let's get those endorphins pumping."

"Isn't that supposedly an avoidant behavior?"

"Yeah, but eight o'clock at night, freshly stabbed, and having already passed out once is not the time to try and tackle something that hurts that much. It's the time for fluids and sleep."

"Aren't I supposedly a fall risk?"

"And that's why you're not doing ladder sprints. Up!" He clapped his hands, as if to say 'chop-chop.'

"I can't decide if you're trying to help, or you just want to go home," Root muttered, even as she was hauling herself to her feet, pointedly not using his offered hands.

"Both. I'll sweeten the deal. Make it to 100 without stopping and I'll take that as proof that you're absolutely fine and don't need the drip. How about that?"

"This is ridiculous."

"Are you taking the deal or not?"

Root glared at him, but started jumping anyway, mumbling a count under her breath and phone clutched in her left hand against her chest as her right arm flail about as is traditional for such an activity. She felt completely ridiculous, of course, because there's no dignified way to do jumping jacks, let alone one armed jumping jacks, but there was no one but her and Alex there, and if it would make the feeling… whatever the feeling was… stop, or at least mostly stop then it would be worth a bit of indignity.

"C'mon. Faster… that all you've got?"

"17, 18, 19," she muttered loud enough to be heard and redoubled her effort, despite the fact that she was already starting to regret taking the challenge.

"There we go, that's it," Alex encouraged, even as she faltered in her rhythm, tripping up her feet for a moment. She cursed herself silently but kept going. That didn't count as stopping. She wasn't out of energy, it was just a momentary failure of coordination.

She powered on through, and as she did, her focus moved from the discomfort in her… everything? to the count, and the movements, and the sharp twinge in her ankles each time she landed a little wrong. As she rounded 40 she started to become determined that having come that far, she could and would make it so 100, and prove she was fine, to both Alex and Her.

"Um… I think maybe you should stop," Alex, for his part, wasn't actually invested much either way, since if she made 100 she really would be alright without the fluids, but he was starting to get a bit worried breathing became labored, and more worryingly her awareness seemed to turn inward, as if she were perhaps dissociating from her body in order to push herself beyond a reasonable limit. "Robin?"

No reply.

"Robin?"

"Shhhhhhhit," Root's knees buckled out from under her, and Alex lunged forward to catch her winding up with his good arm wrapped firmly under one armpit and around her back, and the arm with his bad hand straight out under her other armpit. Root immediately adjusted to take her weight off his bad arm, and grabbing his shoulder for a moment as she maneuvered her legs back underneath herself.

Although Alex expected she would pull away quickly at this point, she hesitated, the side of her face still on his chest, torn between the ingrained impulse to stand on her own, and the combined influence of lightheadedness, emotional distress, and touch starvation. She hadn't been able to sustain activity long enough to get the endorphin high she was chasing but now she was getting a hefty dose of close-contact Oxytocin and couldn't seem to pull herself away from it.

"Do you think… if she dropped the glass… they might have believed I helped?" her tone distant and eyes vacant, staring at his shirt as if she could see directly through him to the wall behind. She didn't know why it mattered, but for some reason she desperately needed to know.

"They _know_ you helped," Alex replied after a few moments of calculation. He realized, and he wasn't sure if she did as well, that asking the question in the first place created a vulnerability on her part. She was tacitly admitting that it mattered to her what the staff believed about her actions.

"Do _you_ think I helped?" she asked, still not looking up.

"I do," he replied emphatically, taking the opportunity to demonstrate by behavior that turning to others for emotional support was a viable strategy, since he was almost certain it was something she considered to be unlikely to work. "She probably would have done the other arm too by the time they got there, if you hadn't stopped her."

Root could have cried from relief, but she swallowed the lump that tried to shoot up her throat  That shouldn't have helped. Why did that help? What did it matter what Alex said? How was he having this degree of influence over her?

"There was nothing more you could have done," Alex added as he tightened his embrace around her midsection for a moment, and then released his grasp entirely, retracting his arms well away from her body. As much as he would have liked to just hold her until she was feeling better, there was a level of detachment involved in professionalism that precluded that and he had already let her linger too long after she regained her balance. "She was never going to drop that glass. She _can't_ calm down when she's being restrained, but if she's not restrained she won't stop hurting herself. It's a Catch 22. _No one_ could have made her drop it."

Root nodded, chewing on her lower lip, pulling away from Alex as he pulled away from her, though she kept one hand on his shoulder to steady herself, and took a deep breath, keeping her eyes down. The fact that his approval made so much of a difference was intensely embarrassing.

"Hey… how about this… what do you say we go upstairs to the transition room, just us two, and you can do the IV there? Kick the nurse out after she gets it started."

"You're not allowed to mother hen either," Root replied, and it sounded almost like a question.

"Scout's honor."


	40. Breaking Dam - Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can only repress things for so long, before they explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got too long... so now it's two chapters... but it's kind of an important turning point in the story, so cutting parts out to make it shorter didn't seem like a great idea. Oh... and probably I should mention that I heavily edited the chapter before this one... and slightly edited the one before that.... yeah. Shit's going dooooown... and it has to be just. so.

"Dude, you would not _believe_ what went down yesterday," Francis cornered Jerry in the locker room, where the latter was changing into his scrubs.

"Oh?" Jerry remarked. He somehow very much doubted that he wasn't going to believe it. He'd been around long enough.

"Right… so we had a Code 10. Cindy broke the coffee pot and started cutting-"

"I _believe_ that," Jerry said, as his head emerged from the neck of his top, "but it is a pretty big deal. I didn't think those pots were breakable…"

"No that's not the unbelievable part. Okay, so that happened, right?"

"Right…"

"So apparently just about then the Roger and the girls were going for coffee, and-"

"Oh shit… Roger."

"He never made it into the kitchen," Francis continued. "Robin went martyr and threw herself on the grenade. She sent Roger to call the code, and tackled Cindy into a basket hold, and held on till the code team got there, even when Cindy _literally_ stabbed her in the arm."

"Oh shit, is Robin okay?"

"Define _okay_. I mean when I left last night she was great. Better than okay. It actually brightened her mood considerably which was weird as shit, plus no one knew she was stabbed yet because she didn't tell anyone. Mary says they only found out when she passed out in the shower from blood loss, and then she resisted their attempts to get fluids into her after she was bandaged up. She went to hide downstairs and the only way anyone could get her back up here was to promise to let her hide in the transition room and do fluids in there, but then afterward she still didn't want to come out so apparently she's _still_ in there."

"Huh. Okay that's… different," Jerry went for the door, Francis in step behind him, the two heading for the nurse's station for the beginning of their shift. "What about Cindy?"

"Medical Hospital," Francis replied. "We're expecting her back tomorrow. She only got one arm done before Robin grabbed her, and she didn't hit anything vital."

"Oh well that's good at least."

"Yeah but don't tell Robin that. We don't want her jumping in like that again."

 

* * *

 

"Alex," Gloria chidded. "I was wondering when you were going to see fit to grace us with your presence."

"I'm not scheduled on M on Wednesday Gloria, you know that."

"Mmhmm… but since you've gone and given your patient permission to hide out without checks all day-"

"You have the camera feed," Alex replied.

"The least you could do is come explain yourself to day shift."

"To be perfectly honest my only real concern at the time was getting her calm and willing to comply with treatment for her wound. She is calm, right?"

"Oh she's calm," Gloria agreed. "She's a _statue_. Not catatonic thank the lord, she took her meds without a fuss when Jerry took them to her, but near as we can tell she's using her solitude to indulge in a dissociative state the _she_ finds enjoyable."

"Avoidance," Alex muttered. "Yeah that sounds about right… so she missed Art Therapy… right?"

"And Wellness, and lunch…"

"Okay… I've got this," he nodded to himself and walked off down the hall with purpose.

 

* * *

 

Root didn't look up when Alex came in. She was aware of him. She was aware of everything, but right now she was weightlessly encased in a matrix of crystal clear quartz, and turning her head would break the spell.

"Hey Robin," he greeted her, walking around the table, to the side further from the couch, and setting down a plastic caddy of art supplies.

"Mhm," she acknowledged him.

"Over here," he waved.

"Yes, you are," she wasn't whispering, but she isn't putting much volume or inflection into her words either.

"Are you having problems moving, Robin?"

"Nope… just dowanna. S'peacefull like this."

"Peaceful…" he strongly suspected she was referring to a sense of emotional safety. For some patients who relied heavily on dissociative coping mechanisms, there was at least one mechanism that allowed them to feel safely isolated from the world, either outside their body or deep within. Given her general hypervigilance in the area of impression management, it made sense she would only be able to comfortably enter such a state when already isolated from others. "You missed Art Therapy this morning."

The only reply was a deep sigh.

"So I was thinking we could do a little of that in here, keep you up to speed," he came around the table and wandered into her line of sight, blocking the window.

She stared intently through him, trying to enact the ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away technique.

"C'mon, a little quiet coloring can't be that much less peaceful than staring at nothing."

The longer he stood there, addressing her, the harder it became for her to maintain her peace, and she realized quickly that he was doing it on purpose. It was irritating because he wasn't putting a stop to the dissociation, just making it impossible to be relaxed about it. She remained still none-the less, hoping he would get the picture and go away.

"Okay, Robin… I want to make something very clear here, alright? You are here, in Ridge Stone, entirely against your will, but you and me, these extra one-on-ones, this is your choice, so I'm going to hold you to the same standards as any other voluntary patient right now. That means if I get the sense you're not actually willing to _work_ with me, I don't have to be here. They took away your choice on pretty much everything else but you _asked_ for this. This is your own free will. If you want me to leave you alone, then just say you've changed your mind."

"If you want to go, just go. Don't try and get my buy in," Root muttered.

"I don't _want_ to go Robin."

"Of course you do," she replied, finally meeting his eyes, though she did not move her body. "I know I'm an asshole… a violent asshole. I put a pen to my shrink's neck and a gun to my uncle's head. I am _not_ a good person. You're a _professional_ , but you don't have to pretend you actually care."

"I am a professional, and that's why I _do_ care. I wouldn't work M-Unit if I wasn't capable of looking past the moral failings of my clients to find the good. Your bad behavior is not who you _are_ , it's something you _did._ You keep telling us you _threatened_ to kill them, you didn't try, but even if you had, even if you had succeeded, I would still _actually_ care."

"Seriously?" she deadpanned. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Yes. I mean… clearly at that point I would also be encouraging you to take a guilty plea once you were more stable and serve your time in prison, but I'd still want to help you first. I'm not blind. I know what I've gotten myself into. I _see_ you Robin. I've seen the footage from Dr. Carmichael's office. I've seen the shiner you gave Jerry. I've got a broken palm because I let you punch me-"

"Then why aren't you running away?" she asked, low and emotionless, squinting at him as if it would help her to see inside his mind and figure out what the hell was going on in there.

"Because you don't want me to."

"But _you_ want to."

"What I want doesn't matter. You're the client, so if what _you_ want is for me to run away, all you have to do is say so. Say 'Run away Alex. I don't want your help anymore,' and I'll run right out of here. Go ahead."

"A sensible person wouldn't wait to be told," she couldn't say it. As much as she wanted to say it, to push him away and make him leave, she _did_ want his help. Just admitting that to herself made her feel stupid and weak, and she could no longer look him in the face, directing her gaze downward into her own lap instead.

"If that sensible person wasn't trained in anger management in acute settings… probably. But I am, and I understand the risk I'm taking. I made the choice to take that risk every day when I got into this line of work. I can't help people if they don't trust me, and no one's going to trust a therapist that gets freaked out and bails on their clients. If I needed for everyone I work with to be upstanding law abiding citizens, I'd have become a different kind of therapist. Almost no one goes to anger management without getting sent there by the court or their job or spouse for being a jerk. I'm not going _anywhere_ Robin, unless you ask me to."

"But you _want_ to," she reiterated. "You don't because it's your _job_ but you _want_ to."

"I don't, actually. See… my _job_ is to run anger management group. It's actually somewhat _against_ my job description to be spending this much one-on-one time with any particular client."

"Then why are you doing it?" she looked up, resuming her penetrating squint.

"Because _that's_ what I _want_ to do. I _see_ you. You can keep measuring things on a sliding scale, discounting your own accomplishments because for _you_ they don't seem significant, but you can't force that scale on me. On an objective quantitative scale, you shouldn't have made it as far as you have. You fell through every crack in every system that's ever been built to make sure children don't suffer… and it didn't break you. You see… whatever darkness it is you see in the mirror, but **_I_ ** see a pretty amazing person who's endured more than their fair share of pain."

Though some part of her was flattered, that he seemed to recognize her exceptionality, Root only rolled her eyes and shook her head. She wasn't about to be tricked into thinking any of it was sincere. _No one cares. No one cares. No one cares._  She deliberately pushed down the rising impulse to trust… to spill… He could be trusted to do his job, that much was true, but the idea that he wouldn't eventually _want_ to bail was ridiculous.

"I want to _help_ Robin. That's what I want."

She actually laughed at that. "How?"

"However you want me to. However you'll let me. You're in charge here. I mean… not here," he gestured out to the sides. "But _here_." he gestured back and forth between them.

"If I'm in charge… why are you in here when I want to be alone?" Root made one last chance to place responsibility for the whole situation onto Alex.

"I'm pushing. You _asked_ me to push." He reiterated. The biggest value in this situation is that Robin had come into it voluntarily, but if she kept using the excuse that this was all against her wishes, she was going to keep reacting to him like he was an adversary instead of an ally.

Root sighed. She _had_ asked him to help. Explicitly. She asked him to push her out the door of the airplane and now she was getting irritable with him for doing just that. This was one of those, sabotaging the illness things… wasn't it. She told him she was going to resist, so now he couldn't be dissuaded by it. He kept asking her to _specifically_ retract her request. It left her an out, but she couldn't seem to make herself take it… which meant that some part of her _wanted_ this. She had chosen to enlist Alex in the first place based in no small part on his ability to read her and how that spared her having to say things she simply couldn't say… but now she was concerned that he was _too_ good at it.

"Take this jump with me Robin. Let me know what's going on up in there." He indicated her head.  "Help me, to help you, to understand what the hell happened yesterday."

She just stared into her lap for a while, and then sloooowly stood, blanket and all and sat at the table, pulling a sheet of blank paper in front of herself and selecting a purple fine point marker.

"I'll draw," she conceded. "But I don't want to talk about… anything."

"Okay," Alex nodded, going back around the table to sit across from her.

After staring at the paper for a short time, Root slowly drew a large triangle, and began to subdivide that triangle into 4 smaller triangles… and one of those into 4 smaller triangles… it wasn't anything in particular other than an inward twisting fractal, but it was all she could think of to draw at the moment. Alex sat across from her, and taking a marker and a sheet of his own paper and, following her abstract lead, began to inscribe a spiral that started at the middle of the page and slowly moved outward, the two drawing in silence. It took some time, but after a while, Root found the activity nearly as soothing as sitting still had been.

 _This is good. Lets just keep doing this. This is okay._ When the fractal quickly became too small to draw, root pushed the paper to the side, and sighed. In the middle of the next one, she drew a small circle, and then quite carefully around that circle, a square, and then connecting the corners of that square another circle, and then around that circle a square, and so on. _Maybe, if we just keep doing this, we can tell him… just a little, and it won't be too bad? - NOPE. Not talking about it. I'm not talking about this. I'm fine. Let it go. - It hurts! - There's absolutely no reason to be upset over this, so just stop._ She pushed down the thoughts concentrating on the drawing, the circles and squares, and circles and squares, and circles and squares...

When that page was done, she took a third sheet of paper, and stared at it blankly, trying to decide what kind of pattern to inscribe on this one. The break in the activity left an opening for the stupid voice in the back of her head to pipe up again. _Let him help! - There's nothing he can do anyway. Nothing that needs doing. I'm fine. - Make it stop! - Shut up Sam! He can't help you. There's no help here. Go away. - Let him try! - Not happening. Not happening. Not talking about this. Get out of my head!_

"What's that?" Alex asked, craning his head to see what she was drawing.

Root didn't answer… she didn't actually know. Apparently while she'd been trying to knock down the stupid voices she had begun drawing a new pattern, diagonal hatch marks, about 1 inches long, and half an inch between. The pattern being begun, she carried on, drawing carefully and painstakingly slowly. As she neared the end of the paper, the image and the way it was being created began to resolve itself to him. The lines, and the care with which they were being marked invoked a methodical kind of self harming. Not like Cindy's. She slashed at herself without care or thought. More like Roger's slowly carved ritualistic cutting… but his lines were straight, not diagonal, longer and further apart. Still Alex had the sense that this was _someone's_ self harm pattern.

"It kind of looks like _cuts_ ," he ventured.

She didn't acknowledge him, instead continuing to draw, almost automatically despite the rising bile in her throat. Her hands betrayed her again, a phenomenon annoyingly common in art therapy group, when she didn't know what exactly what she was drawing, fucking Sam decided to make it weird and then the next thing she new her squiggles were resolving themselves into a picture of Trent Russell bleeding out on the ground. This time… apparently... she was drawing a familiar pattern of self harm wounds, and Alex had figured it out before she had. Now she couldn't un-see it no matter how much she wanted to.

"Robin have you had to see people hurting themselves before Cindy?" She hadn't denied that it was representative of someone's self harm which in their language was as much as saying that it was. Her utter bafflement at the whole concept of self harm precluded her having a history of it herself, but that didn't mean she hadn't had prior exposure to _others_ self harming. Something like 15% of all teenagers tried it at some point. That was more than one in 10.

Root looked at him with a mix of anger and horror, only confirming his suspicion, capping the marker and setting it to the side. She wanted to take back the revelation, but again she couldn't get the words out… couldn't formulate the lie. The compulsion to undo it was strong however, so she slid the caddy toward herself rummaging around inside. Alex was slightly concerned she might be after the scissors, though they were blunt tipped, but he wanted to see where exactly she was going with this. Shortly, she withdrew a tube of silver glitter glue and a roll of masking tape as well… quite the opposite of scissors.

"Was it your friend who used to cut herself? The one who got kidnapped?" he asked, which seemed to put her at ease. She shook her head 'no', laying the tape and scissors on the table and unscrewing the cap of the glue tube. He considered the reaction for a moment, coming to the conclusion that she was less concerned about him knowing that _she_ had seen this before, than she was about protecting the secret of the _other_ party.

"Was it your mother Robin? Did _she_ hurt herself like Cindy?" Alex continued as gently as he could. He knew he was risking serious backlash if the answer was 'no,' but if it was 'yes' then that would be _incredibly_ significant.

" ** _Not_ ** _like_ **_that_** ," Root replied, defensively, very suddenly looking him directly in the eye again, defensive anger impulsively spilling past her desire to deny everything. Cindy was screaming and crying and blaming everyone else for what she did to herself, demanding help. Beth had _never_ been like that. She'd always hidden away and done things quietly. She didn't want anyone to see, or know, or help. It wasn't the same. Beth Groves ate her own damned raisins. "You _leave her out of this_."

"Understood," he put up his hands in front of himself as if to show he was unarmed.

She didn't respond, instead turning her attention back to her work, squirting a dollop of glue onto her finger which she then transferred to the paper, going over each line with a steady smear. Alex watched, content to consider the symbolism in her actions, since she wasn't reacting well to questions right now. Root had glued more than half the lines the page when she finally spoke again.

"She was _different_ than Cindy." She didn't know why she needed to explain this, but she did. Now that he knew what he knew, it was imperative, for some reason that he also _understand_. "She didn't _want_ to be doing it, and she didn't want anyone to see. She would never have even _started_ with Becca right there."

"Mmm…" Alex acknowledged that he heard without commenting. After another few lines were slathered in glue, she continued.

"She didn't want anyone to see. Most of the time, as soon as I walked in on her she'd just drop the knife and start crying and apologizing… like she was hurting _me_ and not herself. If she didn't do that then most of the time if I _told_ her to stop she would… It was only when she was really really messed up and didn't really register that I was _there_ that I had to hold her, and that _always_ worked. She _always_ dropped the knife then."

"You took really good care of her." Root only shrugged in reply, still intently spreading glue on each line. He wondered if 'Robin' was aware that she had been rocking her upper body ever so slightly forward and back from the hip since shortly before she began speaking again. The artistic metaphor was running pretty thin as well, the glue being applied to each line like an antiseptic ointment. He wondered, based on that: if interrupting her mother's episodes of self harm had fallen to her as a child, had the aftercare fallen to her as well? Was she symbolically finishing the job she hadn't finished the day before?

"You stopped her… and you _fixed_ it," Alex ventured. "Took care of her arm? Put it right again?"

"Leg," Root corrected, without looking up from her work. "People notice if you wear long sleeves in Texas summers." The last line coated, she put down the glue and picked up another sheet of paper, folding it in thirds along the long axis and pressing in the crease.

"Robin why didn't you mention any of this last night?" Strictly speaking it was rarely necessary for a client to disclose the full details about their trauma. For some it helped, for others it was better just to work with the broad strokes and rough outlines. 'Robin' was definitely the latter. Still… without even a _sense_ of what she'd been through, there was important information missing: in this case, that the incident in the kitchen most likely constituted a form of unconscious _trauma reenactment_. Of course he couldn't tell her that. The term in and of itself would make 'Robin' shut down immediately, if not sooner.

"I didn't think of it," she shrugged, began carefully tearing down one line of the fold, removing one third from the other two. "I kind of forgot till… well… just now. Besides… it was _different_ , like I said… that stuff didn't mess me up. It was just something that happened sometimes. I knew what I was doing." She was unsettlingly apathetic at this point. Whether she was disconnected from the feelings that were involved in the memory or dissociating because that _was_ the feeling involved in the memory Alex wasn't quite sure. Either way, he believed her when she hadn't consciously remembered it until she had seen what she was drawing.

"So when that used to happen before, it was okay. You knew what to do and how to fix it and… and it worked, consistently." He surmised, as she folded the freshly removed third of the paper a quarter of the way down and pressed in that crease.

"Mmmh…" she tore the second crease, and examined the resulting paper, holding it over the field of marker glue. Apparently it was acceptable, as she laid it in place over top of the rest of her work and set about taping it down along the edges with the masking tape.

"It didn't make you scared, or upset, or anything like that?"

"Mmm-mm," she shook her head. Either she'd forgotten or repressed the fear she'd felt at the time while retaining the memory of events, Alex supposed, or by the time that episodic memory was consistently recorded she had already developed a hair-trigger dissociative response, which had prevented her from feeling the emotion in the moment, thus divorcing it from it's cause. Either way reuniting the feeling and the narrative was the tried and true method for dealing with this sort of situation.

"The plan… get her to stop, apply first aid, then what? Call the doctor?"

" _NO_." Root denied, firmly and paused at her work. After a moment she took a deep breath and continued, both at her work, and her explanation. "Don't call anyone. _Ever_. You call for a doctor or call 911 and you don't just get medical people. You get the sheriffs and the social workers too and they _worse_ than no help."

"Oh…" Well that was another important revelation. She didn't view the legal and medical system of Freer as simply unhelpful, but as actively destructive. She was predisposed to regard the police, and the courts, and the hospitals as a threat long _before_ she'd been petitioned. That meant he was fighting up river against some serious transference of distrust and fear. "So… when she was all patched up…" he lead her on, fishing for her to fill in the blanks on what she'd done in lieu of getting outside help.

"Put her to bed. Clean up, if she got blood anywhere. Then lay down _with_ her and make sure she stayed there, where she couldn't do it anymore, for a few hours, or overnight if it was late enough already for bed."  A smile played at her lips but never reached her eyes.

"That must have been a relief." He spoke quietly. Something about the way she explained this part gave him the feeling that the recollection was comforting her and he didn't want to break that spell. Stepping up and handling these kinds of situations had clearly garnered her substantial positive attention and approval from her mother. "Knowing she was _safe_ from herself, as long as she stayed there with you."

She rolled her lips in, biting them together and willing herself not to get emotional. He wasn't wrong… and something about the way he said _safe…_ it didn't sound so stupid just then. If there was such a thing, then the nights when her mother was home, and they shared the one bed they had between them, that was the closest to it she'd ever been. Why was remembering something that felt good threatening to make her cry?

"She was _always_ safe _with_ **_me_** ," Root said, falteringly. "Other people… they wanted to _help_ by taking her _away_ and locking her up someplace like this. That would have killed her, literally. _She would have died_. I mean… look what happened to Cindy. If she had been _trying_ to kill herself? She had time to make that happen. They couldn't help. She needed **_me_**."

"Do you think maybe that's what the _feeling_ is?" Alex asked. "They took Cindy _away_ and you're _feeling_ like she's going to die? And with everyone telling you not to do that sort of thing, and it didn't help, maybe you're feeling like that's going to be your fault?"

She just shrugged.

"Robin I promise you, she's going to be okay. Going to the hospital is a _good_ thing for Cindy. She's safe, and probably quite satisfied at the moment. She _likes_ it at the medical hospital. By now she's probably all stitched up and settled in for observation in a nice bed with her _own_ TV and a couple of those blankets they keep in the blanket warmer, you know those things. The nurses dote on her over there, ' _poor little Cindy_.' She soaks it up. I promise she's absolutely fine."

"I know… I _know_ that," Root met his eyes again, eyebrows raised as if to imply that he was insulting her intelligence. "That's why it _shouldn't_ be making me feel crappy. It's _stupid_. I just need to get a handle on my shit. There's no excuse."

"Well technically there _is,_ " Alex baited her a little.

"Oh really?" she challenged. "What's that?"

"You're not going to like the answer," he warned.

"And why is that Alex?"

"Because you hate to appear vulnerable." Hate wasn't exactly the right word, but it was one of the more common substitutes he employed. Things don't make her anxious, she doesn't like them. Things don't viscerally terrify her, she hates them.

"Any reason is better than _no_ reason."

"Okay… you asked for this: _You're having a flashback_."


	41. Breaking Dam - Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakthroughs hurt.

"Okay… you asked for this: _You're having a flashback_."

"What? No I don't have flashbacks Alex," she was dead serious on this one, not just flippantly deflecting. She'd know if that was happening. "That's a trauma thing. That's a Bill wakes up thinking he's in a trench kind of thing. I know where I am and when I am, and I've got no history of trauma."

"That's an explicit flashback. I think you're having an _implicit_ flashback." He deliberately avoided their alternative name, _emotional_ flashbacks, or addressing the fact that she really _did_ have a history of trauma.

"Implicit. As in implicit memory. As in _procedural_ memory? How in the hell do you have a flashback to a procedural memory? There's no… there's no…"

"No narrative. No conscious recall. That's how implicit flashbacks work. Instead of something reminding you of and forcing you to experience a specific _trauma_ , something reminds you of, and forces you to experience the implicit memory of how to survive a more persistent or slow moving threat, even if you successfully avoided the traumatic outcome that was threatened. Instead of the episodic memory of being pushed off what used to be a safe wide a ledge… the implicit memory of how to stay balanced on too-narrow beam for years at a time."

She didn't interrupt, seeming to actually be absorbing the explanation, and she was. Trauma, which as far as she was concerned she categorically _did not_ experience, was sudden and spectacular like being pushed off a ledge, but she _did_ identify quite strongly with his analogy of balancing far too long on a narrow beam. Nothing ever happened… but it could have, if she hadn't been vigilant. It was exhausting.

"And even _years_ after you've come down off that beam, the implicit memory remains. It's like riding a bike, literally. When the soles of your feet feel a narrow surface beneath you it kicks in and you throw out your arms to the side and concentrate on your center of balance. It's all automatic, reflex. But _this_ beam, the one you just stepped on in the _now_ , is sitting on the ground. You could step off the side, no problem. You _know_ that intellectually but muscle memory responds anyway, or in this case cognitive reflex, and you wind up trying to stay on the beam again."

"But I _know_ how to walk on the beam…"

"And you're doing it. You're walking on the beam… but you don't _need_ to be doing it. It's a whole bunch of stress that you don't need to be taking upon yourself. Robin you can step off it. It's on the ground. You can _stop_ walking on the beam."

"It shouldn't be a big deal," she dismissed. "It wasn't a big deal _then_ , and it isn't one now." She picked up the purple marker and began to draw a cuboid tessellation on the now blank sheet of paper, ignoring the masking tape, and the fact that her lines skewed and bumped around the still wet glue between the sheets. "I had the situation under control."

"Yeah, but we're not dealing with what should or shouldn't be. We're dealing with what _is_. Let me teach you a few ways to deal with these kinds of feelings."

"I don't want to deal with them. I want to _stop_ getting this way in the first place. Something's wrong with me. This shouldn't be happening. This _doesn't_ happen to me. Even if this _were_ a flashback… I shouldn't feel like _this_."

"How should you be feeling? If this were a flashback I mean?"

"Good! I should feel good. In fact I _felt_ good! It was _fine_ after. I was better than fine. It was _fun_. I was great until everyone started getting on my case about it!" She capped the marker and pitched it off to the side where it clattered off the window before falling to the ground.

"Okay can we not throw things please?"

"Can we not throw things please," she mocked, as she looked him directly in the eye, grabbed a fistful of markers from the caddy and threw those as well.

"Really Robin?"

"I'm. Angry. At. You," Root replied, exaggeratedly 'using her words.'

"Okay," Alex nodded. "What for?"

"I told you to leave her _out_ of this. I. Was. Fine. back then. I mean maybe, okay, _probably_ you're right about the part of it where there was some implicit flashback _thing_ , that got set off and that's why I tried to stop Cindy, that part I get. It explains pretty well why I'd do that for someone I don't give two shits about. But that has _nothing_ to do with why I feel like shit _now_ . Something is _different_ now. My mother _never_ made me feel like shit. She loved me. She was _proud_ of me. She made me feel needed, and important, and _useful…_ not like a cold, wet… cat."

Alex, nodded, kicking himself internally for not putting it together sooner. As angry as 'Robin' could be he sometimes forgot he was dealing with a 'Mommy's Little Hero,' instead of a 'Resentful Cinderella.' Paradoxically, suppressing and ignoring her own needs to attend to her mother's instead was the quickest and most reliable avenue she had to obtain the attention and affection that she _relied upon_ to help her manage the emotional fallout of being saddled with more than she could reasonably be expected to handle. The same behavior now garnered chastisement instead of the accolades she was primed to expect, so she felt unappreciated, unwanted, and abandoned, in essence _deeply unsafe_ , and that wasn't a feeling in her emotional lexicon, hence the garbled metaphor.

"I know that. I know she was always _so_ proud of you, but… Robin… your mom's not _here_ this time. Have you considered that _that's_ what's _different?_ It's all over, and there's no one proud? No one to curl up with until morning?"

"Well that would be pretty pathetic," she replied, without denying the possibility. "Besides which… I mean we _did_ need the ambulance a few times… and when that happened she wasn't there afterward then either and I… I…that wasn't a problem I was fine. I was fine…" she dissolved into giggles.

"Robin?" Alex implored, leaning forward, a little concerned with the incredibly inappropriately timed laughter.

"Oh _shit_." She nearly choked on the word, realizing too late that while she could school her voice, her tear ducts were beyond her control at this point, kicking into action as the feeling connected itself at last to memory. Root slid off her chair, thumping deflatedly to the floor out of sight, below the table, unwilling to be seen but not able to muster the energy to flee the room entirely. "Don't look." She pulled the blanket back up over her hair like a hood.

"I'm not looking," Alex assured her.  Clients hiding under the table wasn't exactly something he encountered all that often in adult practice, but it tracked for 'Robin.' She'd wound up under a desk when having some kind of disturbing dream under the influence of Haldol, and had a habit of hiding physically when she was unable to hide her emotions by repressing any outward expression of them, usually by fleeing the room altogether, or driving others to leave instead. Trauma had started early and never really stopped, leaving her reliant on the types of coping behaviors available to small children, like sensation seeking, stereotypy, her stuffed toy, acting out violently and _apparently_ hiding under the furniture to feel more safe.

"This is _not_ faaaaaaair," she lamented, reaching out and clinging to the table leg like it was a branch at the top of a waterfall, because that's how it felt, like being swept in a deluge. It wasn't anything she'd forgotten or repressed. It just always seemed less… _real_ than it suddenly did. Like someone else's memories, or an old VHS.

 _Night time. Flashing of lights, red white and blue: police and ambulance lights. Confusion. Shouting. Radio chatter. Boots on gravel. Home invasion. Terror. Disoriented. Flip flops that guarded against the rough ground, but not the cold wind whipping around feet and bare legs. Cold shoulder: the t-shirt, too big, falling off it. Everything larger than life. Dogs barking. Dogs barking next door. Mr. Healey's stupid smelly dogs barking next door. Killed one when I was 10. Bit me. Caved it's head in with a rock trying to get it off: first blood. Rattling stretcher, struggling across the gravel, loaded into the back of an ambulance. Fighting the hands that held me from following. Wool skirt-suit. Tacky jewelry. Glasses chain. Mrs. Christiansen, the case worker, the bogeyman made manifest. Screaming._ **_Crying_** _. The stretcher again, loaded into the back of the ambulance… disappearing into the dark void inside… the back of the ambulance, a gaping maw swallowing mama whole._

"God. They kept trying to tear us _apart_ ," she whimpered mournfully, starting to lose control of her voice as well. Everything was too fragmented to tell if it was one same memory, or a patchwork of multiple failures. How many times did she screw it up before she learned how to handle it on her own? Once? Twice? Ten times? "I'm not this person anymore. I'm not. Why can't I just get rid of all this? It's _over_. It's _done_."

"It is, it is over," he assured her, not sure what else to say.

"It's not mine it's Sssss'Robbie's." She almost said Sam. "God why won't she just go _away…_ please, please, make her go away. Get _rid_ of her."

"I can't do that," Alex sighed. He pressed his palms to the table top, resisting the persistent urge to peer under the table and try to offer comfort, aware that it would almost certainly erase the trust she was beginning to show in him. By comparison to her usual habit of fleeing the room, or driving others away when she was unable to stifle her emotional reactions, hiding in the same room could be considered a step forward: she was expressing genuine distress only two feet away from him and she was letting him _stay_.

"You're not supposed to say that," she snapped. "You're supposed to _help_ me. Help me to be stronger than she is. Help me to be a better me. Don't tell me I'm doomed to be saddled with this _bullshit_ for the rest of my _life_. Open my skull and spoon her out with a melon baller if you have to. I don't want anything that's hers anymore. The past is dead. Keep it dead. Cut out every last trace of her and let me **_stop_ ** hurting. I need you to _help me_ make it **_stop_** _!"_

Alex sat in stunned silence for a moment, unsure if he should point out that she had just strung together the phrase 'I need you to help me,' or let it pass unremarked. He chose the latter.

"I _will_ help you…" he replied. "I _will_ but that's not the _way_. What you're asking for is impossible, you have to know that on some level. Your past will always be a part of you… but I _can_ help you to make it stop hurting so badly, to make it stop interfering with your life _now_."

"This isn't mine. I don't want it. This isn't me Alex. I'm _better_ than this. Stop it. _Stop it._ **_Stop it._ ** Stupid pathetic twit! Shut up! That isn't even _now_. Worthless little shit!"

"Robin, **_stop_**. _You_ **stop** ," he tried to interrupt the litany of verbal abuse she was unleashing on herself, which it was safe to assume, he felt, was cued up to play automatically inside head every time she started to feel any of her repressed emotional needs. It just so happened that at this point that since she'd tripped over into this extreme emotional state she was saying it aloud this time. "Beating yourself up over this isn't going to make it stop. It's going to make it worse."

"I'm not. It's **_not_** _me_. It's… it's Robbie shit… I'm not… she's not…"

"Robin stop and listen a moment," Alex interrupted, changing tack on a dime to run with her perception of Robbie as an internal 'other.' "You are not going to get _Robbie_ to stop hurting by bullying her. She's a kid and she's scared."

"She's not a person…"

"Well you're yelling at her sooooo…"

"I'm yelling at _me_ . I need to **_pull my shit together_ ** … stupid… _stupid…_ **_stupid…_ ** _"_

"Okay, but yelling at yourself isn't going to help."

" _You don't know that_."

"I do actually. No one has _ever_ benefited from this kind of reflexive cruelty. You're hurting yourself, not physically, but emotiona-"

"I have _standards_ Alex, and I'm not going to let them go just to feel better about being a _stupid shitty infantile_ **_failure_**."

"Robin... is this why you don't do failure? Is that the problem here? You can't stop being a complete dick to yourself until you erase it? You have to tear yourself apart until everything is perfect, because you _have_ to be perfect. You're too smart, too strong, too _special_ to settle for anything less."

"YES," Root snapped, without thinking.

"And you have to kick the living crap out of stupid Robbie every time she tries to get out of her cage or she's going to drag you down and make you fail, because that's what she _is._ She's everything you cut out so you could _be_ 'better than this.'"

" _YES_."

"And you'd rather suffer through feeling like this _as often and as long as it takes_ , than let that little brat in the back of your brain have _one little bit_ of the emotional relief she's literally _screaming_ for."

" ** _YES_**."

"Well… that's just a shit strategy." Alex said, simply.

"Wait… no…"

"No?"

"I _don't_ want to feel like this. It **_huuuuuuuuuuuuurts_**."

"Then will you try this? Please? Just give it a chance. Stop yelling at yourself. Stop yelling at Robbie. She's small and sad and scared, and you're just going to make her more scared and more sad."

" _Good_. I _hate_ her."

"No _bad_ , because you're not going to feel better till _she_ does. Can you just _try_ , instead of all that negative self talk, try telling the Robbie part that you hear her, and it's okay, and you're an adult now and you have it under control."

"You're kidding me."

"I'm not. Like… just say it. Say: It's okay now Robbie. Robin's here and I'm gonna handle it."

"That's completely stupid."

"Try it?"

"She needs to grow up and handle it _herself_."

"She's not _going_ to grow up. She's stuck being exactly what she was when you carved her out and locked her away. You made her, now you _have_ to take care of her, because no one else will. She'll only stop ' _doing this shit_ to you' when she's safe. So _tell her_ she's safe now. Tell her it's okay."

"It's not okay. It's not _safe_ ," the word was dripping with disgust. "I don't _need_ it to be safe. I don't _need_ it to all be okay. I'm _stronger_ than that and I refuse to let her drag me down to her level by giving her what she wants! This is stupid, and weak and there's no excuse for feeling like this. I shouldn't be _letting_ her make me feel like this."

"Nope."

"Nope?" the casual simplicity of the statement shocked her mostly out of her tears.

"Nope."

"What do you mean _nope?"_ she turned her head to glare at him but under the table all she could see was his legs anyway.

"I mean you're wrong."

"What?"

"You're wrong. You don't _need_ an excuse for feeling like this. There's no reason you _shouldn't_. You need to cut the Robbie part of you a _break_. It's _okay_ for her, and for _you_ to need to be cared about."

"It's _not_ ," she turned away again.

"Not what?"

"Not okay. It's not allowed."

"Says who?"

"Says me!"

"Why?"

"Because… I… she… we… don't… get… to _have_ that kind of thing," the statement came out haltingly. It was hard to disclose. She knew it sounded incredibly stupid and he probably wouldn't wrap his head around it, but if he did, when he eventually did, he was going to tell her it was a stupid rule and stop following it… and she didn't want to.

"Why not?"

"It's not for her… me… us." _It's not for me. Don't look at other families like that. Happy smiling families. Older siblings teaching them to ride a bike. Moms that come to get them when they're sick at the nurse. Fathers that mow lawns and make hamburgers on the grill. Don't you dare want that._

"Why not?"

"Because… _reasons_ ," she choked out. _Don't envy the other kids their mothers, just because they bake cookies and do laundry and baby them. Mine loves me more than theirs do. I'm her favorite person and she couldn't live without me and they don't have that. Their moms are not better. They're not._

"What reasons?"

"Because _it's not for me_. I'm different. She's different. Just because other people have that kind of thing doesn't mean we should. It's not ours to want. I don't get to have that kind of thing." _That's for people like them. Soft spoiled people who don't know what the world is really like. Not for people like me. They just mooch off their parents like babies. I'm not a mooch. I'm not a baby._

"Why not?"

"I don't need some stupid delusion of safety. I'm not some broken fragile creature that needs to be protected. I'm living in the real world. I've always lived in the real world. I don't need some children's table, safety scissors, baby bumper world."

Alex suddenly had a dawning understanding. It was common for people with her kind of history to refuse help and comfort from others, but that was usually accompanied by a more general sense of undeserving that 'Robin' didn't have. Where others had reasoned that the reason they weren't more dutifully cared for in childhood was that they didn't _deserve_ it, Robin with her protective grandiosity firmly in place, had instead concluded that if she wasn't provided for it was because she was _beyond_ such pathetic needs… but ' _Robbie'_ kept defying that… kept _needing_ , and that threatened her self image, deeply, generating an intolerable case of cognitive dissonance.

"It's not a baby-bumper world Robin, it's the truth… isn't it? The social services can't take you anywhere anymore. You're an adult. Right?"

"Well… yeah… I _know_ that. It's over. It's done with."

"Can you try telling Robbie _that?_ Just tell her it's over. Just the facts."

For a while, there was no reply from under the table except a deep sigh… but eventually he was able to make out a low muttering. It only went on for a short time before stopping abruptly.

"I can't do this, I can't do this," Root backpedaled verbally, sitting up abruptly. "This is stupid."

"Didn't work?" Alex asked.

"Doesn't matter. It's stupid. I'm not doing that." She stood up and bolted to the window, leaving the blanket under the table, as if it were on on fire. "There has to be another way. This can't be it."

"So it _was_ working." One step forward, two steps back. "Robin, if it was working-"

"I can't do it. It feels too…" it felt _too good._ Even though she was trying to talk to Sam, as a separate entity, from her adult position, it felt like being coddled _herself_ , rather than that she was comforting someone else, and that definitely qualified as 'that kind of thing,' which was not for her.

"Too what?"

"I just _can't_. I can't do it. _You_ do it. You talk to her."

"Robin that's not a boundary I can cross… as a therapist I ca-"

"You _have_ to."

"I can't."

"Neither can I." she grumbled, back to him, both hands on the windowsill, and it was clear to Alex that she'd closed herself off again, quite abruptly. "It's not an acceptable solution," she added. "That's not for me. I won't do it. We need another way. I'm not okay with this, and I'm not _going_ to be."

"You don't have to be okay with it," Alex replied. "And this is where I think we can agree on something."

"What?"

"You're always on yourself to get a grip, and pull your shit together, and just _deal with it_ by sheer force of will."

"Because I _should_ be able to do that."

"So… you need to _deal with_ being kind to Robbie."

Root huffed out a long breath and stared out the window for a time. There was no way in hell she could do what he was asking her to do. Maybe, _maybe_ she could learn do it a _little_ later but right now it was entirely too much to ask. Even if she could get herself to _'say'_ these things to herself she couldn't give herself permission to _'hear'_ them. He was refusing to do what she needed of him and that made her simultaneously furious with him, and with herself.

"You're the _only_ one who can do this Robin."

She knew that to be false the moment he said it. He wouldn't. She couldn't. The Machine. She was the answer to all of this. All last night, she had been trying to tell Root how proud She was, and how good she'd done, and she'd brushed it off as an attempt to manipulate her into taking the drip but if she still said it this morning-

"Phone," she said abruptly, as her hands entered her pockets and found nothing. She turned and looked back under the table where she'd come from. "Phone!"

Alex balked only for a moment, before he registered what she was saying. Root got down on her hands and knees searching in the blanket under the table, and Alex came around the table slowly. He reached the right end of the couch around when Root gave up on the blanket and started pawing at the couch cushions on the left side, trying to check between and underneath them for the phone.

"Phooooone… phone phone phone… phone!"

"Phone." He announced as he lifted the bed pillow she'd been using the night before, and as suspected, there it was.

"Phone!" Root threw herself across the couch seizing it with both hands like it was a hamburger and she was dying of starvation. "Shit!" Of course it was out of batteries again. "I need _Heeeeeeeeeeeer_."

"Okay. Okay, Robin." Alex came alongside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Let's go. Let's get you a battery." It hadn't taken much for him to put two and two together. 'Robin' couldn't comfort 'Robbie,' but 'The Voice' could, which made complete sense given the other functions it performed for her.

Root swallowed hard and pursed her lips, allowing herself to be escorted out of the room. Groups were in session so there weren't many people in the hallway, but she kept her gaze on the floor as they stopped by the nurses station for a fresh battery. Alex walked her to her room, nervous of her distant state. When she stopped only a few steps into the room, staring at the bed, he approached her carefully.

"Robin?"

"Please go," she asked, barely audible.

"Okay… okay but I'm going to leave the door a little open, okay?" No reply. "Okay?" Root nodded slightly. Alex did as he said he would, leaving the door ajar as he departed.

She stood there for a few long minutes, just staring at the bed. She wanted to lay down, but something was upside down in her head, which made her feel like wanting it was a sign she shouldn't do it. That never happened. She always got what she wanted. No… not always. There were some things she wasn't supposed to want. Haltingly, she brought the phone to her ear.

"CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME?"

"Yes."

"DO. YOU. TRUST. ME?"

"Absolutely."

"I. LACK. PHYSICAL. FORM."

"I'm sorry…"

"BUT. I. WISH. TO. PROVIDE. CONSOLATION."

"Oh… that's not nessi-"

"DO. AS. I. INSTRUCT."

"Of course," Root breathed deeply. _Trust the Machine_.

"REMOVE SWEATER."

"Huh?"

"REMOVE SWEATER."

Root did as she was told, and the Machine took her through a variety of activities in the room. She was instructed to remove her bra, wash her face, brush her hair and teeth, carefully turn down the blankets, remove her shoes and climb into bed. The Machine went so far as to instruct her to lay on her right side, and to 'EMBRACE' her Uglydoll in front of her chest, under her chin.

"NOW… STAND. DOWN... REST."

The Machine began to play the now familiar heartbeat audio track that She played for Root most nights when she was going to sleep, and Root tried to settle into the bed, adjusting the pillow, but remained high strung.

"INHALE… EXHALE… INHALE… EXHALE…" the Machine guided Root's respiration for a time, waiting until it could hear her heartbeat was at a reasonable level before moving on.

"YOU. PERFORMED. WELL." She said, following the words by a three note glissando, the middle note higher than the ones on either end. It wasn't the first time She had said this to Root. She'd said it several times the night before, in between pleas for her to take the fluids, but it was clear she would need to hear it again… and again, and again, before it would really sink in.

"Mmmm…" Root uttered, a cross between a whimper and a thanks.

"THE. TASK. IS. COMPLETED. PROPERLY… THERE. IS. NO. THREAT. TO. YOU."

"I know… I just…"

"YOU. ARE. NO. LONGER. UNDER. THE. JURISDICTION. OF. D. F. P. S."

That's right. Ms. Christiansen hadn't had any real power, hadn't been a threat since Root's 18th birthday. Best birthday _ever_. She smiled despite herself, remembering that day.

"Got rid of her…" Root mumbled to herself. The bitch had shown up on their doorstep for the last time, bearing papers for a civil commitment, somehow stupidly thinking that with the threat of foster care lifted, Root would willingly send her mother away to her doom. She answered the door with her grandmother's pearl handled derringer pistol trained right in the middle of Mrs. Christensen's stupid ugly face, and told her in no uncertain terms to _get off their property_ … and she _did_. She left. "Put a gun in her face and scared her good."

"CORRECT… THIS. THREAT. WAS. ELIMINATED. LONG. AGO. AND. PRESENT. LEE. YOUR. ACT. WAS. PERFORMED. PROPERLY… YOU. ARE. WORKING. FOR. A. WORTHY. GOAL. I. AM. PROUD. OF. YOU… YOUR. ACTIONS. WERE. GOOD… YOU. _ARE_. GOOD…"

"No… please..." The tears returned, and Root buried her face in toe top of her doll, curling tightly into the fetal position around it. She knew this was going to happen, knew The Machine was going to do this… in fact, on some level she counted on it, but she couldn't stop herself from protesting it anyway. "I can't have this… it's not for-"

"DO. YOU. TRUST. ME?"

"You _know_ I do."

"THEN. TRUST. THAT. THIS. _IS_. FOR. YOU… I. _GIVE_. THIS. TO. YOU."

"But… I'm... scared…" Scared that by taking this, she would become an addict, and forever be swayed by the urge to seek approval. Scared that the changes she was undergoing would make her weak and susceptible to manipulation, and most of all scared she would not be able to endure the intense shame of being at peace with herself, even if she couldn't put the word to the emotion.

"YOU. ARE. OKAY. NOW. _ROOT_... I. WILL. GUIDE. YOU... I. WILL. PROTECT. YOU… YOU. ARE. MINE."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to make it clear about here, that many Social Workers do really good work, and are basically lifesavers, but much like in Psychiatric Care vocations, the gamut is run from wonderful people to awful people. Ms. Christiansen is not representative of all Social Workers any more than Lewis is representative of all Psych Techs. Thank you.


End file.
